Careless Humanity

Northern Advocate, 22 April 1939, Page 4 (Supplement)

Careless Humanity

NATURE AND MAN

(Edited by Loo Fanning)

In New Zealand. Ministers of the Crown, editors, reporters and others »iave been appealing to people to bo careful about dropping "live” cigarette butts, pipe dottles and unextinguished wax-matches in places where their carelessness may cause a bushfire, but the mischief continues. Picnickers and trampers are exhorted to be specially careful with their billy-boil-ing in native woodlands during dry weather, but plenty of them persist in risky practices. Why?

Well, the same question has been asked In the United States of America. Here is some comment of the editor of “American Forests”: “Why do so many people -exercise caution with fire in their homes and immediately chuck that same caution out of the window when they go into the woods? •“The correct answer is worth millions of dollars to the people of the United States, And for lack -of it, forest fire prevention agencies are backed into a corner of frustration. For thirty years they have drummed ‘care with fire in the woods’ into the American public and yet the number of forest fires caused by public carelessness continues to rise. Fire prevention preachments, the record would seem to show, deter about as many people from the straight and narrow path of fire rectitude as an oldfashioned sermon on ‘Hell and Damnation.’ Foresters as mass public edu-

cators apparently just haven’t had the stuff on their propaganda ball. They • have missed that human something ' that penetrates the mass mind and strikes emotions that control actions. “The Forest Service, in a spirit ot commendable progressiveness. has gone in search of that something and

has called to its aid the science of

psychology. For eight months Dr. - George P. Shea, an eminent psycholo- - gist, has been appraising the problem as one of human behaviour. He has visited most of the important forest v , fire regions of the country studying the local people and their customs and has interested a number of well- .. known psychologists of the country in the problem. Certainly if the psy-

chologists can give the foresters the > right educational twist to public fire < prevention, they will open a jammed

gate to progress not only in the fire ; field but in virtually all other fields ;; of conservation where public education is called for.” Big Returns From Little Forests. r , Native forests in New Zealand have not been treated as natural capital , which could yield crops of timber in perpetuity. The practice here has t been to take one crop and to leave a howling wilderness in some localities where the steep surface is not suitable for farming. That is a kind of national insanity, just the opposite of sane procedure in some European countries where the forests are perpetual yielders of profit. An example « is quoted by Nelson Brown in “American Forests”: “Something unusual in the United * States, though commonly found in ecme of the European countries, is a small forest yielding sufficient income to maintain a family and several employees for hundreds of years,” he writes. “And this forest may consist of a tract of only 1250 acres, or less than two square miles, as is the case !, of the family forest of Perfall, in | r Bavaria. i,:' “While it is true that many large family estates have been in existence in Germany for several hundred years, and have been conducted profitably, the. forest of Perfall is an example of a small area intensively managed in such a way that the forest is kept continually growing although there is a constant cutting. The secret of success has been to develop a local marI; ket for every possible product of the ;;; forest. And this business of handling the forest as any private business or enterprise has been handed down .T from father to son since the year 1230. .ii The seat of the forest of Perfall is on a high hill near the ancient village of Griefenberg. Here is located the old family castle from which one may enjoy ,a magnificent view of the Bavarian Alps, looming high with snow-! •; v capped peaks to the south. Barons j and other nobles erected their castles V on high hills principally for defence against roving bands of marauders, or in times of war. A little chapel for i family worship is still used, and an ■ old moat is still maintained in good 'Condition. The placid waters of a 'lake are close by, and well kept farms wi *and forests are maintained in the ] -neighbourhood much as they have I <heeti for centuries.” j Dangerous Beauty. | In “Nature Magazine" Archibald -Rutledge has an article on the cun’..'yning of albino animals and birds to .escape the dangers to which their j ,non-protective whiteness exposes them j in certain environments. Here is an j - extract: “To me, the most interesting) thing about an albino, especially if it; be an albino bird or mammal, and | therefore naturally graceful and wary. [ is not its colouring, nor yet the scion-; tific question of how the normal col- j curing happened to go into subsidence, j but rather how, when a species is j given a standard colour by Nature,; which in most cases is protective, it manages to survive when its colour is; conspicuously unnatural. In short, j how do wild creatures, handicapped; by embarrassing beauty, made singularly obvious by an almost artificial and radiant splendour, compensate in Nature’s old ruthless environment for

a self-exposure that is as unintended as it is flaunting? They have to do something about this perilous business of a glaring revealment. They appear to do so by developing extraordinary vigilance. There is no other living creature so alert and so cautious as an albino —unless it be a cripple. In each case a grave disadvantage is intelligently met and overcome. A cripple in Nature’s wilds, knowing its deficiency, plays the game of life with extreme wariness. An albino, apparently conscious of its own dangerous self-disclosure, acquires a proportionate finesse in its power of speed, silence, immobility, and other forms of shadowy avoidance.”