Need seen for new type of park

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34106, 19 March 1976, Page 7

Need seen for new type of park

Mr G. Mollett . who retired last week after more than six years as Commissioner of Crown Lands in Canterbury, believes that there is a need for another sort of park in ?sew Zealand—an area that is intermediate between a national park and a domain or camping ground.

The new type of park would be used by people who wanted to get out into the "backwoods.” National parks, he said, could not be used for camping and for trail bikes. These uses would destroy what they had been set up for. There might be opportunities, he said, for the new parks on high country land that had been retired from farming or they might be formed by the purchase of back country stations that did not have much future for farming. The concept, he said, had some acceptance by people outside the department, and when the opportunity came for moves to be made in this direction they would be so much nearer being accepted. Mr Mollett also sees such parks having a role in the walk-way system. The walk-ways were not really oriented to national parks, he said, as these parks did not have the facilities that would have to be associated with walk-ways. Since be came to Canterbury in August, 1969, Mr Mollett has been chairman of both the Mount Cook and Arthurs Pass National Park Boards. Before that he had had very little association with national parks in his long career with the Lands and Survery Department and little knowledge of the high country of the South Island.

When he took up his position the Mount Cook Board had before it a Ministry of Works plan for development in the area. The turning point had come at the stage when the Black Birch fan had come available for staff housing at Mount Cook and it had been possible to localise development. Unplanned and spotty development was undesi-, rahle in national parks and development had to be kept under strict control, he said. Therefore in the Mackenzie, he welcomes plans for development of the Tekapo area, the proposed new village development at Pukaki and the utilisation of the residual area at Twizel for recreational purposes rather than concentrating just. in the Mount Cook area. Mr Mollett says he has special feeling for the Mackenzie and apart from seeing it having a great future for agriculture, he believes that efforts should be made to retain its special character, which people would want to see in days to come. For that

reason he believed that the whole area should be planned rather than just one or two places. In the high country Mr Mollett. said that his department had a very big responsibility with socalled unoccupied Crown land, as well as national parks, and a tremendous 'investment in the pastoral leases and great interest in runholders’ problems and welfare. In the farming area Mr Mollett said that the Department was becoming more deeply involved in pastoral lands management and the Land Settlement Board had brought down farm stocking policies with water and soil conservation values having prime importance in their stewardship of the mountain lands. And what was most heartening today was that the runholders themselves held the same concepts of management and this was demonstrated by the very significant number of run plans that had been entered into with soil and water authorities to retire large areas of country from grazing and to concentrate on the use of the safer country. Lhe best caretakers of the higher lands, even if it was retired and he was not using it. was the runholder, he said. He still retained a great concern for it and interest in it. Mr Mollett said he looked forward to the ap-

plication of management programmes to some of the country that had been retired and he said that still much needed to be done to understand what was required. More investigation also needed to be made into the retiring of country — a retirement fence might, not be the most satisfactory concept. • Mr Mollett was born at Bayview out of Napier where his father managed a dairy farm. He wa-, at Napier Boys’ High School on the day of the Napier earthquake on February 3, 1931, when the school’s assembly hall collapsed. That no-one was injured was due to the fact that the boys were outside doing their week of military training at the start of the school year. Mr Mollett subsequently attended Wellington College for a few months, being among boys who were billetted out. to continue their education after the disaster. Because of the depression he returned to school

for an extra year and also spent a year studying shorthand and typing before he obtained his first job in late 1935 in Dalgety’s wool store at Port Ahuriri as a temporary clerk.

In March of the following year he joined the Lands, and Survey Department in Napier as assistant records clerk at £77.15s per year.

in 1940 he went overseas with the Third Echelon of the Second New Zealand Division and in the following year was captured on Crete and spent the rest of the war in prisoner-of-war camps mainly in Germany. For two years while a prisoner he studied for an

English diploma of agriculture and while he sat the examinations his papers were lost in the bombings of 1944-45.

Back in New Zealand he rejoined the Department in Napier and was shortly afterwards appointed senior clerk. In 1951 he went to the head office of the Department in Wellington as research and statistics officer collecting information and preparing annual reports. After six years he became divisional officer for land development and in this capacity was secretary for both the Land Settlement Board and the Marginal Lands Board. His next appointment was to the district office of the Department in Wellington as district administration officer. in 1961 he became assistant superintendent of land development at Rotorua in the Department's most important land development area in the country. Although a little past its

peak of a activity in land) settlement, Mr Mollett said I that some 45 to 55 units : were still - being settled a year, and he had responsibility for servicing ofj newly developed areas with) roads and power and work-: ing with local bodies. He! said that some 10 to 15j miles of completed roads; would be handed over to: the local counties annually! for administration. In 1966 Mr Mollett re-1 turned to his home area; and that of his wife as; Commissioner of Crown! Lands in Napier. A trip overseas is early I on Mr Mollett’s plans for I his retirement.