NOXIOUS WEEDS

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXIX, Issue 20065, 23 March 1935, Page 7

NOXIOUS WEEDS

To the Editor of “ The Timaru Herald ” Sir, —I am in the main in agreement with the correspondent who wrote to you yesterday, with regard to the noxious weeds menace. At the same time I think that he is more than a little unjust to our district stock inspectors, who are doing their best under quite impossible conditions for quite moderate salaries. “Mackenzie's” attack on these officers is the more to be regretted since they are, like all Civil servants, prevented by the regulations from defending themselves by replying to newspaper correspondence. In anything I say in this letter, I wish it to be distinctly understood that it is the system and not the officer I am attacking. It may not be generally known that the local inspector is under the control of a veterinary officer whose headquarters are Dunedin, and that previously he was under the direction of another veterinarian with an office in Christchurch. I have been in this district for over twenty years, but have never met the departmental head for the district outside of his office, nor have I ever heard of him making a personal inspection of the back country, and even if he did it is doubtful whether he would possess the knowledge and practical experience to enable him to form a sound opinion with regard to weeds and rabbits. I met the late head officer in his office in Christchurch on various occasions, and always found him most courteous and helpful with advice concerning stock diseases and kindred matters, and I retain the impression that he was a most highly qualified veterinarian as well as a most courteous official. But, on the other hand, he appeared to be very poorly acquainted with our local conditions. On one occasion several Fairlie settlers—myself amongst them—were prosecuted for exposing infected sheep for sale. As since the war some of the old proprietary dipping preparations on the market had so deteriorated in quality (but not in price though) that they were little more effective that pure sulphur would be, the local branch of the Farmers' Union endeavoured to get the Department to analyse some of them or else have tests carried out with lice infected sheep at Lincoln College or elsewhere. To these proposals we failed to get a hearing, so I called at the head office for this district, which was at that time in Christchurch, and protested against the unfairness of prosecuting farmers at Fairlie, whereas at Addington, although I had seen on one day full thirty pens “ticketed,” not a single prosecution followed. The chief officer was perfectly courteous, and expressed surprise that such a state of affairs existed, and agreed with me that the law should be carried out impartially in the whole of the district under his control. He was, however, by no means convinced that my statement of the position was correct. Subsequent inquiry proved that I was right in every particular, and after some correspondence with the Farmers’ Union, Fairlie was put on the same footing as Addington and there were no further prosecutions for some time. Naturally the local inspector was blamed for this differential treatment, although all he did , as in duty bound, was to report to his head office that certain people had exposed lice infected sheep for sale, and it was there that his instructions came from to take action. The really astonishing thing about the matter was that the departmental head for the Canterbury district was unaware until I informed him, that while w T e were being prosecuted no such action was ever taken at Addington,, and yet instructions to the local officer to prosecute came from his office. In case I might be thought to be exaggerating regarding the quality of dipping preparations which were being sold at the time, I would remind your readers that some time ago Mr Leslie, the well known Lincoln College veterinarian, was reported as saying that not all dips sold on the market gave good results and some were known to be definitely unsatisfactory. Allowing for Mr Leslie’s Aberdonian caution, this is strong comment, and yet some time previously our complaints got no hearing at all from the Department. In my young days in the North Island, when ragwort just started to get away, the local inspector was continually worrying the small settlers whose places adjoined the main road and many prosecutions took place for not cleaning the weed to his satisfaction—an almost hopeless proposition in any case on cow country in those days when weed exterminators were almost unknown. About that time, I was employed by one of the larger landholders and I still have a vivid recollection of the wondeful luxuriance of the tall yellow-flowered ragwort on the back portions of the holding where it grew absolutely unchecked as it was well back from the road and therefore unseen. Another instance of variable treatment occurred in a case where several small farmers whose holdings adjoined a main road were prosecuted and fined for failing to destroy rabbits, although their places were comparatively free of the pest. Under a law passed when Sir William Nosworthy was Minister of Agriculture, a person is deprived of all defence in such a case and the presiding magistrate must convict on the inspector’s evidence alone, regardless of what proof is brought in defence against the charge. This, of course, outrages every canon of British justice, but nevertheless, it is still the law of the land today. At the same time as these prosecutions took place, a large holding in the same district was infested with tens of thousands of rabbits, but the owner was only warned by the inspector and given ample time in which to commence operations. Should my statement regarding “tens of thousands of rabbits” be thought an exaggeration I can prove that it is quite in accordance with the facts and is in no respect an overstatement of the position. In each of these cases, the system under which the local inspectors worked was responsible for the different treatment of different cases for the risk of anyone visiting the district and writing to the newspapers or reporting to the head office that noxious weeds and rabbits were increasing in the back country was negligible, while on the other hand, it was very great in the case of small holdings on the main road. When all the circumstances are considered, I think it will be admitted that it is unfair to blame the inspector, who is working under a most faulty system, and merely does the best he can while at the same time he keeps an anxious eye on his job. Endless notices are sent out to destroy rabbits and clear weeds or grub gorse, but generally speaking they are more or less disregarded as they appear to be distributed according to a list of names kept in the office, and not as the result of a personal inspection. So it naturally follows that occasionally a man who has just finished poisoning rabbits or grubbing briar, will gel official notice to start the work within fourteen days, while on the other hand settlers are overlooked who are neglectful in these matters. This again is due to a system by which an inspector’s efficiency is judged, not by the way in which rabbits and noxious weeds are controlled, but by the number of notices shown to have been sent out in the periodical reports which he must make to his head office. Everyone knows that when rabbit skins are a good price, the pest is kept down and that when the price is poor they get away again and that

the inspector’s influence is only secondary to that of the price of skins in the matter. With a view to bringing about an improvement, I have endeavoured at different times to have the matter discussed by the Farmers’ Union, my own suggestion being that more local control is the only remedy. If in all matters relating to the local administration of laws concerning land, roads and bridges, public reserves, noxious weeds, rabbits, stock diseases, river protection, afforestation, and similar matters, Shire Councils (such as are proposed by one or two parties in New Zealand) were given control with reasonably wide powers much overlapping of local bodies would be saved and many of our boards and councils could be done away with in the interests of efficiency and economy.—l am, etc., S. P. BRAY. Sherwood Downs, March 19.