They shoot tigers, don’t they ?

Press, 7 November 1978, Page 6

They shoot tigers, don’t they ?

A hunting, fishing but not a shooting Englishman dropped in on Christchurch yesterday to show films on the wildlife in Nepal. Jim Edwards’s trip started in Europe in September and I will end with his return to his family in Nepal at Christmas. His purpose is partly to raise money for Sir Edmund Hillary's Himalayan Trust which builds hospitals, j schools, bridges, and power I units for the Sherpa people of the mountains of Nepal, i “Ed Hillary’s love of these I people from his early climbing days is well known.” Mr Edwards said. He also hopes to raise en-, vironmental consciousness ' and an interest in wilderness 1 adventure — that is, walk- ' ing. (“I believe you call it ' step up”), mountaineering and river running (in rubber I boats); but not shooting, 1 He has spent the last 16 1 years living in Nepal. In 1962 1 he went there on a tramping, fishing, hunting holiday and liked it so much that he < stayed and set up a “wilderness adventure” business 1 which has since spread to the ' United States an* Iceland. 1 He is about to start a similar ! i business in Ceylon. I Mr Edwards does not be- I

lieve his business interests to be detrimental to the environment, in fact quite the opposite. “If the wilderness is destroyed, it is gone for ever. Nobody gains,” he said. “So conservation is common sense after all.” His jungle lodge, “Tiger Tops,” situated in the Royal Chitwan National Park in Nepal, an area used in the past for the tiger hunt, is now a controlled demonstration of adventure and conservation. Visitors hunt the Royal Bengal Tiger, Asian rhino-

ceros, buffalo, antelope and crocodile, not with guns, but with cameras from the back of elephants. “What I’m trying to do is give the message that conservation and tourism can go hand in hand if tourists are restricted in certain areas so that they don’t spoil the environment they come to see. “There is a growing number of people who want to experience the outdoors and it is not too soon for governments and tourist organisations to work together,” Mr Edwards said. Since he met his wife, Fjola (pronounced Fiola) on . a fishing, tramping holiday ’ in Iceland — he caught her ' “on a back cast” — they ! have returned annually during the “slack” season (the ■ monsoon season in Nepal) • with their two children, 1 Kristjan Bahadur, aged seven, t and Anna-Tara, aged four. The children speak fluent ■ Nepali, English and Icelandic. I This is Mr Edward’s first i visit to New Zealand, and his ! impression — “although I s haven’t been here long ■ enough to have the know- ■ ledge to back it up” — is that we respect our environI ment and our national parks ■ are well managed.