The question often arises, is it fair to kill a Heron, Hamerkop or Kingfisher if it visits your pond on a daily basis and kills your koi?

I am talking about the variants of the above that are not on the endangered species list.

Touchy subject but here goes! Why are there creatures on the endangered list?Because of annihilation by greedy human beings - The Bison ,The Dodo, The Rhino ? Because of greedy man. Cutting the forests down, the animals lose there habitat and become endangered. That Hammerkop would rather eat the frogs around your mud dam, far easier to catch than having to wadein knee deep water. I had fish in my old swimming pool which needs re-marbeliting, and the frogs or toads or what ever you call them left thousands of eggs, which eventually became hundreds and hundreds of frogs. I threw polystyrene sheets in to allow the frogs a resting platform, the platforms were thick with frogs. Time to lower the water, to reduce the possibility of frogs escaping into the surrouding garden. Pumped out water until the shallow bottom was exposed, the frogs abandoned ship and went scaveging for food. Look out the bedroom window and Mr Hammerkop is cleaning up the little frogs, and he follows up on the ones ducking under the algae, leaves and other debris on the bottom, and feeds his little family for several days.
The Heron nails a few koi tiddlers, which could be culled on the next pass. But that beautiful, fully grown heron has to be throttled to death for some little coloured fish which are banned in certain countries. See that Heron standing in the long grass on the freeway to be seen by all the passing motorists and marvelled at. The koi is only seen by a small bunch of enthusiasts if it got through all the culling stages, or somebody buys it who hasn't a clue and kills it with kindness, too much food, and fouls the water filters, etc.
PS A Hammerkops nest is 2 mtrs (TWO )meters wide 1 (one) meter thick and takes 6 months to build Entrance below on the side I BELIEVE IT IS ILLEGAL TO KILL INDIGENOUS BIRDS, ANIMALS, ETC. ROY VICKERS DURBAN

Thanks for your input Roy. There is not an easy answer.

The question is often, where do you draw the line?

What about Minah's that chase all other garden birds away kill the chicks of other species and take over their nests.
Sparrows that take over your roof and bring lice into your home and chase all other birds away?
Doves or other birds that cause airplane crashes close to an airport?

As far as I know, neither the Hamerkop, common Kingfisher nor blue Heron is on the protected species list, and as far as I know, it is not illegal to kill non-protected bird species. It will only be illegal to shoot them with a rifle, air rifle included, in a build-up area/Municipal area.

I will investigate on the legal aspects and report in due course.

Please give us your views apart from voting.