SAVING FORESTS FROM FIRE

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 66, 10 December 1938, Page 10

SAVING FORESTS FROM FIRE

It is evident from the record total of driving licences issued during the year by the Wellington City Corporation that holiday motoring will be more popular than ever this summer. Similar increases have been shown in other centres, and it may be taken for granted that, given normally 'fine weather, the number of picnic and camping parties throughout the Dominion will also constitute a record. In view ot these coming circumstances, and also because of the growing response by all other sections of the community to the call of the outdoors, the national campaign to prevent the destruction of New Zealand forests by fire is a welcome one. If it reduces by even an acre the annual loss of native bush and planted timber, its inauguration on December I will have been more than justified. . Details of the campaign, published a few days ago, snow that it has been designed primarily to emphasize the economic waste of forest destruction, and the harmful effect of the soil erosion that takes place on denuded land. Stickers prepared by the State Forest Service from scenic photographs are to be attached to mail matter from all Government departments, and warning notices are to be erected on camping sites, roadsides and Crown lands, and in forest reserves. Illustrating as they do the transformation of valuable forest country into barren wastes, these photographs convey a message which campers cannot fail to understand. Thoughtlessness and carelessness cause the majority of grass and bush fires, and the constant repetition of this warning message throughout the early pait.of the holiday period should reduce the number of such, fires by keeping the need for caution constantly in the minds of holidaymakers. The Minister of Internal Affairs, in a statement published yesterday, drew attention to one of the commonest causes of fire —the cigarette butt. “It was thought,” he said in referring to recent destructive fires in the Rotorua district, “that the tossing of a cigarette butt from a car had caused at least one of these fires..... I wish 1 could show all motorists the killed trees and black hillsides and flats of Rotorua.” In the United States of America it is recognized that cigarettes and matches carelessly flung aside constitute the greatest peril to forests, and in a list of instructions recently issued for the guidance of campers in American national parks, foremost place was given to the warning: “Watch your smokes.” There is scope also for education in safe methods of camp-fire lighting. A sense of responsibility will not always prevent the inexperienced camper from causing damage to forest and crops, and it is probable that, this summer, there will be many tenderfoot parties on the highroads and at scenic places. It would be neither difficult not costly to widen the scope of the campaign, and give it added, value, by including for the benefit of these newcomers simple instructions m the art of prudent camping. The holidaymaking public cannot be prevented from lighting fires, unless liberty is to be unpleasantly restricted. What is required is guidance in lighting fires safely.