Govt. Control Of Wild Life Opposed

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30602, 19 November 1964, Page 18

Govt. Control Of Wild Life Opposed

Control of New Zealand wild life habitat should not be entrusted to Government departmental direction, the North Canterbury Acclimatisation Society was told last night.

“I feel it would be wrong to leave the maintenance of habitat to a department which is absolutely under the control of the minister,” said the president of the society (Mr F. J. Gorton), addressing the 100th annual meeting which was attended by 70 members. Mr Gorton said that members must recognise that a civil servant could not “get up in arms” with his minister because sportsmen wanted him to.

On the other hand, the council, being absolutely independent, under the present set-up could call a meeting tomorrow, stir things up and take the issue to Wellington immediately. Mr Gorton said that New Zealand was a country with a rapidly-expanding population. Having all sorts of factories springing up and other encroachments on land, the maintenance of wild life habitats would become more important each year. In the report, Mr Gorton said that the society was formally constituted on April 25, 1864. Frederick Weld (later Sir Frederick Weld)

was elected its first president. The next month the Provincial Government granted the society the use of four acres in the domain between the River Avon and the Public Hospital. There, the society erected a cottage for a curatos and made enclosures for birds and animals.

In the next 10 years a variety of animals and birds such as deer, kangaroos, ferrets, opossums, a monkey and a wallaby, several species of water fowl, pigeons and pheasants were under the care of the curatos in enclosures.

Trout ova was imported from Tasmania, and lated salmon ova was brought from England and America. The society vacated the garden site in 1928 and two years later bought 10 acres at Greenpark, the society’s present site.