BUSH PRESERVATION.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIX, Issue 45, 21 January 1939, Page 8

BUSH PRESERVATION.

Ik a lesson in the conservation of beauty and utility were needed it has been taught in a rather grim fashion by the Australian bush fires. Many lives have been lost, hundreds of thousands of of acres of valuable milling timber, great tracts of scenic bush country, and scores of townships have been ruthlessly destroyed by the flames, leaving a trail of ruination which will levy a toll for a long time to come. New Zealanders have generally displayed a healthy appreciation of the beauty of their natural resources —visitors from overseas have showered encomiums of praise on our unique scenic attractions —and the preservation of our forest and bush lands has from time to time received prominence. Apart from the aesthetic aspect—which after all is the most noble —the economic wastage inseparable from destruction ought to encourage even greater care on all sides. Coinciding with the Australian fires, parts of the countryside in Central Hawke’s Bay suffered a similar fate on a much smaller scale; yet the lesson to be derived was expressed forcibly. The source of a blaze is difficult to trace, but there has been more than a suggestion that in the majority of cases in the Dominion, and in Australia also, carelessness lies at the root—the neglect of small but essential precautions by picnic parties and others who have occasion to light fires in bush country, and their failure to appreciate the potential danger,they create. In the Rotorua district, extreme vigilance is maintained in the State forest areas, and visual reminders to travellers of the need to exercise care are numerous, so that to a degree a “tree sense” is being inculcated. 'The Minister of Internal Affairs has taken the opportunity to point a lesson from the recent disaster, and lays stress on the importance of observing small precautions when camping. “They are small things when we are enjoying an outing in the bush, but they become big things when flames cover the dry undergrowth and leap up the beautiful trees,” Mr Parry remarks. Care and watchfulness will reap a rich reward in preserving for to-dav and the generations to come the beauty that is so prolific and is one of our grandest natural assets. Jovce Kilner, the American soldier-poet,, touched a responsive chord that cannot fail to awaken assent when he believed that he should “never see a poem lovely as a tree.”