Devoted To The High Country

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30763, 29 May 1965, Page 10

Devoted To The High Country

The land, and in particular, the tussock country of the South Island, has been an almost life-time interest of Mr L. \V. McCaskill, who yesterday spent his last day on active duty with the Tussock Grasslands and Mountain Lands Institute, of which he has been the director for the last four years.

Though not a farmer’s son, the names of the Mackenzie runs were familiar to the young McCaskill, for his father -was in the wool scouring business in South Canterbury and while he died when Mr McCaskill wag only five, his mother leased the business at Winchester for a number of years afterwards. More than 50 years ago, interested in the tussock country by his agriculture teacher at Timaru Boys’ High School, Mr McCaskill took a summer vacation job on a high country sheep run in Southland and so the long link with the high lands began. In 1919 he entered Lincoln College set on becoming a research worker in the tussock grasslands and his ambition was further encouraged by the late C. E. Foweraker, who was his lecturer while taking a botany course at Canterbury University College, but when he graduated bachelor of agriculture in 1922 there was no place for a grasslands research worker and the young McCaskill ended up teaching “among the dairy cows” of the North Island.

But in teaching agriculture at Wanganui, Hawera and in the Auckland province and then at Timaru Boys’ High School, and in teaching agriculture and biology at the Dunedin and later Christchurch Teachers’ Colleges, he was still linked with and serving the rural community. Today many of his former students of training college days are wives of farmers whom he has been meeting in the course of his still closer associations with agriculture in more recent years. In 1944 when he moved to Lincoln and became lecturer in rural education he moved still closer to the agricultural industry and he recalls gratefully opportunities given him for these closer contacts by Professor E. R. Hudson and then Dr. M. M. Burns, the two heads of the college under whom he worked. He became secretary of the farmers’ conference which began in his day, he organised the lecture tours undertaken from the college, and edited college publica-

tions. A course in rural education, including rural sociology as well as extension methods, was initiated and a course in soil conservation ultimately to become a degree course was launched. These courses were the first of their type in the Southern Hemisphere and the first in the Commonwealth with the exception of Canada. But it was not until 39 years after he graduated in 1922 that he became a full time employee in the tussock grasslands—that was in 1961 when he became first director of the tussock grasslands and mountain lands institute.

An able forceful speaker, a man of extraordinary energy and drive, Mr McCaskill has been identified with strong views about some aspects of New Zealand’s pastoral scene.

It was while he was in Dunedin at the Teachers’ College there from 1928 to 1922 that he first saw the impact of the deer on the country of west Otago—the damage done to the bush and the resultant erosion and changed character of rivers and streams choked with shingle—a phenomenon still evident in spite of the deer being practically brought under control. From that time he says he could not be other than an exterminator. He sees no place at all for the noxious animal in land use in New Zealand. Likewise he believes that land capability must be the basis of all development and use of the more critical higher country and holds that half of the conservation problems that the country is now facing would never have occurred had these principles always been applied in planning.

He is not "a closer-up” of vast tracts of the high country. Certainly he believes that in the future much of the class 8 country will be destocked, but only after provision has been made —often with the taxpayer for obvious reasons sharing in the cost —for alternative improved grazing at lower levels. He is strongly against farmers voluntarily agreeing to destock class 8 country for deer, chamois and thar to take over. Talking about the institute which he has guided in its

infancy. he says: “I would like to feel that we have a small but highly efficient staff in the institute and that with all of its deficiencies it is going. “I would like to say that there will always be a need for seme such thing as the institute. I think that a small staff backed by a strong committee of management can be the spokesman for the tussock grasslands and mountain lands and help place the responsibilities of the runholders in the right perspective. “I believe that there is a place in perpetuity for the runholder as the guardian of the land and as a producer of primary produce.” The Lands and Survey Department’s great 450,000 acre Molesworth run and its manager, Mr M. M. Chisholm, had meant a lot to him, said Mr McCaskill this week. He first met Mr Chisholm in 1946 and has since visited Molesworth 17 times. "I have had a wonderful opportunity of studying the results of the management system devised by Mr Chisholm. He has shown that there is no such thing as a hopeless situation as far as depleted and eroded country is concerned, and has shown that, given time, conservation can pay and is quite consistent with increasing production.” Most of Mr McCaskill’s interests have had a bearing on land use and preservation. In 1944 he was elected to the first catchment board to be established in New Zealand, the North Canterbury board, and subsequently for four years and a half was a member of the Soil Conservation and Rivers Control Council. He became interested in national parks after a visit to some parks in the United States in 1939, and in 1948 he became a member of the Arthurs Pass park board and has been a member of the National Parks Authority since its inception in 1953. He is interested here also in the preservation of vegetation in the strategic catchments where the parks are frequently located and the beneficial effect this has on rivers and streams which flow from these regions, and he has also interested himself in use of the parks by the public and alongside with this the educational facilities to aid public enjoyment of these areas through handbooks, self guiding nature walks, the museum at Arthurs Pass and the popular nature courses held now in all parks in the summer. It is likely that in retirement Mr McCaskill will have more time to spend working

for the national parks and the numerous scenic reserves which have just recently been placed under the general supervision of the national parks authority. The Forest and Bird Protection Society, of which he has been a vice-president for many years, was the only major protection society in the country, he said, and in their efforts to protect birds and forests were making a decided contribution to conservation in New Zealand. Mr McCaskill has been encouraged by the co-operation he has received from farmers, scientists and staff members and the council of Lincoln College. In retirement it is certain that 'Mr McCaskill’s energy, still apparently undiminished, will continue to be devoted to the cause he holds so dear —the land, and particularly the high land of this country, and its protection and preservation.