Naturalist Praises Museum, Scenery, And Hospitality

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29146, 5 March 1960, Page 15

Naturalist Praises Museum, Scenery, And Hospitality

Warm praise for the bird and animal exhibits in the Canter bury Museum was offered bv a naturalist from the American National Park Service, Mr Willfam W. Dunmire, of Hawaii, who passed through Christchurch yesterday on a tour of New Zealand’s national parks.

“They nave done a great job, full of good, progressive ideas in making one of the better natural history museums in the world ” Mr Dunmire said. “This- is the type of thing we are striving for in our national park service '* Mr Dunmire, w;ho is a graduate zoologist from the University of California, is particularly interested in wild life. He was delight-

ed to see Royal albatrosses nesting near Dunedin and observe tuis, bellbirds, and other native A keen mountain climber, Mr Dunmire is enjoying reunions with New Zealand mountaineers he met while he was a member of the Californian Himilayan expedition which attempted to climb Makalu in 1954. Sir Edmund Hillary was at that time leading a party of 237 climbers. There is a great future for New Zealand’s national parks service, Mr Dunmire believes, “It is bound to come with greater population, and then everyone will be grateful for the foresight shown in setting aside areas for reserves, he said. The American national parks system had developed rapidly in the last 20 years. "With the growing volume of visitors we are facing a problem of keeping abreast of facilities for them.” he said.

His work as a park naturalist in Hawaii National Park includes lectures to the public—there are several a day on the programme all the year round—research on flora and fauna of the area and its interpretation to visitors, the publishing of guides, and “just being on hand to talk to visitors.” The uniform of the parks officers was somewhat akin to that worn by the Royal Canadian Police, he said. The difference between a ranger’s work and a park naturalist s was that the former protected parks and the latter interpreted them to the public. Mr Dunmire, who served for a year in Yosemite National Park and has been in Hawaii for about one year and a half, said that the spectacular eruption of Kilauea volcano brought 300,000 visitors from America in six weeks, making it necessary to “import” rangers from the mainland to ensure among other things, the safety of viewers.

“Our public programme in the parks is naturally much more developed than yours because it is older, but this will come in New Zealand,” Mr . Dunmire said. Tourism was no longer confined to the wealthy. "As hundreds of visitors have said before me, the great attractions of New Zealand are the magnificent scenery and the hospitality to match,” Mr Dunmire said.