Tauranga Harbour's black swan population and the city's residential pukeko are at the firing end of Fish & Game's campaign this shooting season.

Tauranga hunters are being asked to target the birds because they are causing significant stress to residents and the environment before the season ends on August 25.

Hunters are encouraged to kill black swans residing on Tauranga Harbour. Photo by Ross Brown.

Senior Eastern Fish & Game officer Mathew McDougall says an estimated 5000 black swans reside on the harbour, and the organised hunt at the beginning of this month, killing 146 birds, did not have the impact Fish & Game hoped for.

'The well-publicised black swan hunt wasn't as successful as we'd have hoped, with numbers of birds climbing into the thousands.

'That hunt was organised by a group of hunters, so that was within the normal rules and regulations of the hunting season.”

He says hunters are 'absolutely” encouraged to shoot the swans, and there is no limit to the numbers they can kill.

Hunters are also asked to shoot pukeko – but Mathew warns there is a restriction of 10 birds per hunter, per day.

Fish & Game is currently fielding complaints from Tauranga residents living in subdivisions that have been built around the harbour on former wetlands, he says. 'People are finding there are a lot of pukeko around.

'Pukeko are turning up in people's backyards where they damage gardens and poop on their drives and lawns.

While he says it is more a case of people moving into the pukeko's home – the wetlands – the species is smart and can cause significant damage.

'They can be a real nuisance.”

Though the mallard duck season is now closed, Mathew says there are weeks left to hunt other species, with upland game birds allowed to be hunted in most areas until August 25.

He says the mallard season in the North Island was a tough one, just as Fish & Game predicted.

The short mallard season permitted should have a positive flow-on effect in terms of the numbers of birds which survived into the breeding season, 'to hopefully get us out of the dip we're in at the moment”.

Mathew is appealing to hunters who haven't returned the bands taken from mallards they shot during the season to return them – as they provide crucial information on population numbers. 'The more we get in the more accurate we can be, and the more liberal we can be with season regulations.”

Banding, which normally begins in early January, is only one element of population monitoring work, which includes aerial observations. Banding is used to find out survival rates for juveniles and adults, males and females.

The recovery of a band also means the distance between a banding site and recovery site can be calculated, as can the time elapsed since banding – giving indication of how long the bird lived for.

Hunters are asked to either send their bands in or phone 0800 434 742 with their harvest information.