Dr Shearer sounds environment warning

Press, 26 November 1981, Page 5

Dr Shearer sounds environment warning

PA Wellington New Zealand's environmental record should give no cause for complacency, according to the Minister for the Environment (Dr Shearer). Presenting the Mobil Environment Awards, he said 11 million ha of native forest had been cleared in the last 140 years, and erosion affected more than 75 per cent of the land area. More than 500 plants, animals. and bird species were now classified as rare or endangered. “Much of these problems can be atributed to ignorant or careless attitudes to the environmental implications of development decisions — a failure to make the vital connection between exploiting a natural resource and the effect that uncontrolled

exploitation might have on the future of that resource.” Dr Shearer said the most effective long-term solution to creating a good environment was education. The Commission for the Environment, the Education Department, and the Joint Centre for Environmental Sciences were looking at ways in which environmental education could be fitted into the curriculum. “If environmental education had been brought into school curricula two g decades ago New Zealand would not be having to grapple with many of the environmental problems it now has, and those that we do have would not have been as severe,” he said.

The premier award this year went to Westland High Schools’ forestry project.