Conservation officer accuses media of trivia

Press, 13 May 1987, Page 36

Conservation officer accuses media of trivia

Wellington reporter The news media have been accused by a senior officer of the new Conservation Department, Dr Les Molloy, of trivialising conservation issues. He described news media interest in the difference of opinion between the West Coast branch of the National Party and National’s Parliamentary wing over the future of South Westland’s native forests as “trivialisation.”

Dr Molloy told a conservation conference in Wellington that far more had been written or spoken about this local dispute than had ever been produced on the fate of the forests themselves. It was incredible, on the other hand, that the news media had failed to probe the Government’s decision to abolish the Crown Estate Commission before it had had a meeting. Instead, the Government had pressed ahead

at an extraordinary pace . with the allocation of millions of hectares of public land to State-owned corporations or to the Conservation Department without any public involvement in the process, he said. It should have been the conservation story of the decade, but the news media had ignored it until the Maori prople had rightly taken their concerns to the High Court, where the issue was now being argued.