Future of Wildlife Service

Press, 17 February 1978, Page 12

Future of Wildlife Service

By

OLIVER RIDDELL

in Wellington

The recent article in “The Press” on “Wildlife service in search of a home” has prompted a former employee of the Wildlife Service and the Forest Service to comment on how he sees the problem. “Under the Noxious Animals Act, 1956, the Forest Service became responsible for the control of deer and other animals, taking over the function from the Wildlife Service. Many Wildlife Service officers shifted over and some still occupy senior posts in the Forest Service’s environmental forestry division,” he said. “For many years the division functioned successfully in the principal aim of reducing forestry aspects of Forest Service work, At the same time it has been the aim of the Forest Service to integrate the unit into the general activities of the Forest Service, including responsibility for recreation and the management of forest parks. “Environmental forestry staff, with their inherent interest in wildlife and the back country, have not

always found it easy to cooperate in the other functicm of the Forest Service — timber production. Other staff who have usually entered forestry on leaving school been trained in formal forestry ways and spent most of their working life in forestry camps and villages, have a different outlook. “In the last four years there has been a change in attitude towards the environmental forestry division, and it seems that the aim of the Forest Service is to absorb or assimilate the division.

“The numbers in head office divisional staff have been static for some years. The duties and responsibilities of divisional staff in forest conservancies are being taken over by staff formally trained in timber production. Decisions on wildlife and high country matters previously made after consultation with divisional staff are now being made remote from them. “One of the reasons for this change in attitude is the rumour that circulated several years ago that, perhaps

the environmental forestry division, with its responsibility for forest parks, should be shifted to the Lands and Survey Department —- which already administers national parks, fauna and flora reserves, and so on. So that there should be no unit for Lands and Survey to take, the division is being taken quietly out of existence.

“This may explain why the Forest Service makes blunders such as milling adjacent to Okarito and milling amongst the Kokako. The division within the Forest Service that could be advising on environmental matters is no longer deferred to, but decisions are made by production-trained officers all along the line. “What would happen to the Wildlife Service if placed in the Forest Service?” I asked.

“Judging on the experience of that part of the Wildlife Service that came into the Forest Service nearly 22 years ago, the wildlife officers would be responsible to the conservator of forests in each region. Gradually they would be absorbed, with the conservator

or his principal officers (because of the administrative system that exists) becoming the officers to whom wildlife specialists were responsible, and their spokesmen,” said the former departmental officer.

“The same fate may await the Wildlife Service if it joins Lands and Survey, but at least that department is orientated towards conservation, which the Forest Service, in general, is not. “I do not believe that the Wildlife Service could retain its autonomy if it was forced into either the Forest Service or Lands and Sun vey. The administering department can have too much influence on any safeguarding statutory authority to which a wildlife sendee might be responsible. Directors-general have total authority for their departments and staff. ‘‘The administrative methods of the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, whose specialist sections appear to retain their independence of thought and responsibility, may well be the most suited to administering the Wildlife Service,” he said.