Mr R. W. Cleland For World Parks Meeting

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29850, 16 June 1962, Page 13

Mr R. W. Cleland For World Parks Meeting

Mr R. W. Cleland, supervisor of National Parks in New Zealand, and formerly chief ranger of the Arthur’s Pass National Park, will represent New Zealand at the first world conference on national parks to be held at Seattle from June 30 to July 7.

“A great opportunity to see American na.ional parks ‘on the ground’,” said Mr Cleland in Christchurch yesterday of his forthcoming trip. Before the conference opens, he will visit Mount Rainier and Olympic National Parks in Washington State, and after the conference will visit nine others in the western United States—Yellowstone (the first national park in the world), Grand Teton, Rocky Mountain, Bryce Canyon, Zion Grand Canyon, Sequoia, Kings Canyon, and Yosemite. Mr Cleland has been in-

vited to serve as a vice-chair-man of one section of the conference —'that on the administration of national parks and equivalent reserves. A small conference committee will also discuss the problem of management of animals in parks and reserves, and Mr Cleland has been invited to give it the benefit of his special experience in dealing with introduced animals—red deer, wapiti, chamois, thar, and opossums—in New Zealand's parks. While in the United States, Mr Cleland will also address a biological session organised by the University of Minnesota at Lake Itasca, and the Bryce Canyon National Park "campfire talks” in Utah. Mr Cleland was busy compiling a fine collection of coloured slides to illustrate his lectures yesterday. One that should interest Americans is of a bull wapiti standing in shallow water at the edge of a lake, taken in the George Sound country. Mr Cleland was able to approach the animal quite closely to get the picture.

Mr Cleland’s informal'ion on New Zealand’s deer species—both as sporting quarry and noxious animals which must be controlled—will also doubtless interest the Americans. Mr Cleland is keen to learn from them ways in which park areas which are heavily used by people can be preserved. As an instance, Mr Cleland cited the problems which arise when 5000 persons gather on the slopes of Mount Ruapehu on a week-end afternoon. He will also make a study of the facilities of parks in Minnesota and California.

While at the world conference. Mr Cleland will meet Mr Newton B. Drury, the director of the United States National Park Service from 1940 to 1951, and other prominent people in the national parks world in the United States. "I am certainly looking forward to meeting these people, particularity those in l the field of conservation,” Mr Cleland said.