THE CITY RESERVES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22718, 2 November 1935, Page 25

THE CITY RESERVES

TO THE EDITOR. Sib,—l noted the letter of "Interested Citizen " in a recent issue of your paper, and would also like to express my gratitude to Mr Howes for championing the cause of the bush and its feathered and

winged denizens that cannot plead tor themselves. It must be 20 years since I was taken to see Mr Howes's collection of butterflies and moths, which was afterwards, and perhaps still is lodged in our Museum. Now, a collector has very close and intimate contact with the trees and plants round which, and on which, the insects live, and as he must be an authority, we may take it that his statement is correct when he speaks of the harmlessness of muhlenbeckia and other climbers. And when he tells us that the birds cannot survive in the cleared spaces we know they cannot. In short, the trees, bird 6, and insects are so completely and thoroughly inter-related and interdependent that you cannot destroy one without destroying the others. Much capital has beeu made of the fact that our bush is being opened up for the children. They are not children always—they are children for a very much shorter time than they are adults. The children of to-day are the naturalists of to-morrow, and where are they going to observe the workings of Nature if our bush is so cleared that many of its members will cease to exist? Will they thank those of short vision but long destructive powers who have wasted their heritage for them? —I am, etc., Interested Citizen (No. 2).

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —I have read with interest letters which have appeared in your columns under the above heading at various times, in spite of the obviously widespread opposition to the destruction of our reserves, the vandalism continues. Obviously, Mr Tannock is bent on pursuing obstinately his own way. He claims he is destroying the creeper. No one doubts the destruction, but why does he not destrov only the creeper? Why leave standing the so-called dead and dying trees (which are generally fuchsia) and cut out the varied and beautiful growth in which lies so much of the charm of the bush —coprosma, carpodetus, ribbonwood —to mention only a few? It would seem that Mr Tannock had never travelled to the Catlins district, to Stewart Island, to the West Coast, or to any other district where New Zealand bush is seen in its luxuriant beauty, and seen that bush, if left to itself, does not die There are, doubtless, many societies and

individual citizens in Dunedin that would be only too willing to subscribe to a fund to send Mr Tannock and Councillor Batchelor on such a tour of inspection, provided always that they travelled and beheld with understanding and intelligence.—l am, etc., Bushman. Dunedin, November 1. TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —It seems apparent that the subject of our reserves is no longer a question of whether the work being done by the City Council is in the interests of saving the native bush, but whether our councillors are carrying out the duties entrusted to them in a public-spirited manner. Some of our councillors are candidates for still higher honours. If they cannot carry out the comparatively small duties already entrusted to them in a fair-minded way, are they capable of doing so with the larger duties to which they aspire? It seems to many that the time has come when, even in their own interests, the City Council should call a public meeting to have this subject of the native bush openly discusssed. If it does not, it is only a matter of a short time until others interested will take this step, and the City Council will have lost its opportunity to prove its unbiased attitude. —I am, etc., Interested Citizen. November 1.