NATIVE BUSH

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 56, 8 March 1937, Page 4

NATIVE BUSH

MINISTER'S SCHEME

NATIONAL CONFERENCE

A national conference to consider the Government's plans to .unify the efforts to preserve the Dominion's native bush and to beautify the highways will meet at Parliament Buildings on April 2. The Governor-General, Lord Galway, will preside.

"I am hopeful that as a result of this conference," said the Minister of Internal Affairs (the Hon. W. E. Parry), in announcing the calling of the conference, "we will be able to establish a national advisory council whose objects will be to co-ordinate the work of existing organisations throughout the Dominion, to stimulate the formation of others.^and generally, to be a body through which the necessary work of propaganda, education, and expert advice can be carried on permanently."

The Minister stated that the conference was the outcome of the great interest the Governor-General had shown in matters of tree planting and conservation. Some months ago Lord Galway had approached him expressing the great concern of both her Excellency and himself, not only at the rate at which native bush in various parts of New Zealand was disappearing, but also at the opportunities that seemed to be neglected in many parts of reclothing hillsides and generally beautifying waste lands,along main highways and the approaches to settled areas.

"As the result of several conversations with his Excellency," Mr. Parry said, "I convened, before Christmas, an inter-departmental committee. That committee held meetings and formulated certain proposals which have been approved by the Government, and which I shall bring before the conference. Invitations to attend the conference will be sent to all representative Dominion bodies in any way concerned with 'conservation, tree planting, and beautification, as well as to corresponding Government departments, of which there are quite a number. I have had a list prepared showing, so far as they are ascertainable, all the organisations in New Zealand dealing with these matters.

"I regret very much that it will not be possible to extend an individual in-: vitation to each one of them. It will be necessary, apart from the Dominion bodies, to select a comparatively few whose sphere of operations may be considered almost provincial. At the same time representatives of any of those smaller bodies accredited by letter to me will be welcomed by the conference. In any case, I hope that all these various small local organisations, whether represented at the conference or not, will throw in their weight with whatever national organisation is set up as a result of the conference."