Bushfire Fighting Methods Criticised

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31881, 8 January 1969, Page 12

Bushfire Fighting Methods Criticised

(N.Z. Press Association) WELLINGTON, Jan. 7. There was room for “considerable improvement” in the Australian Government’s measures against bushfires, a visiting American expert on national parks, Mr S. P. Weems, said today. Mr Weems has just arrived in Wellington from New South Wales, where he has been director of the State’s National Parks and Wildlife Service for two years. He was critical of the methods of preventing and fighting bushfires, which had recently caused, very serious damage to Australian national parks. Mr Weems said there should be an improvement in early detection methods, better communications between fire-fighters, and more and better fire-fighting equipment.

He said one of the main problems he had encountered in establishing new national parks in New South Wales

was the conflict of interests in the competition for open space.

Among those seeking existing open space in Australia were those with mineral interests, water catchment authorities, local bodies wanting land for residential settlement, and timber marketers wanting land for forestry. Mr Weems is to make a sixweek tour of New Zealand and will ' report to the National Parks Authority on some of the problems it is having in developing New Zealand’s national parks.

He will then return to America.