NATURE AND MAN

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 80, Issue 87, 13 April 1938, Page 6

NATURE AND MAN

DUMPING OF RUBBISH VARIOUS NUISANCES (Edited by Leo Fanning). New Zealanders are improving in the cult of beauty, but plenty of them are careless in the dumping of rubbish in public places. For example, some of the Wellington residents whose sections adjoin the hilly Town Belt do not hesitate to heave all manner of odds and ends over their back fences on to the public estate. Many years ago I was much astonished at the practice of burgesses of Oriental Bay, Wellington, who threw hedge clippings and weeds on to the foreshore. How gladly did I trounce them in a newspaper, so that their vandalism was promptly checked. When I stood recently on bridges of the Avon and Heathcote Rivers, at Christchurch, I was painfully surprised by the quantity and variety of tins and other “discards” which stupid thoughtless persons had caste into the streams.

On a part of a beautiful popular beach of Wellington Province, there is a dump of oyster-shells from which an overpowering stench arises in hot weather. A person who collects these shells from the city restaurants for grinding into grit for poultry is allowed by the local authority to make an eyesore which also smites the nose. However, that peculiar kind of toleration of nuisances is on the decline.

Among the worst offenders are the picnickers who leave a litter of paper, fruit-peel, tins and other rubbish on beaches, on the banks of rivers and in glades of forest. Stern measures are needed to bring those offenders into better behaviour.

Persecution of Shags.

“No right to live”, is the angry shout of Acclimatisation Societies against the shag. Not content with waging their war of extermination on plenty of private and public property, they are agitating for a permit to invade sanctuaries where some of the birds have sought refuge from their pitiless persecutors. Anglers have certain rights in the matter of sport, but they have not the right to destroy all wild life which they think (often wrongly; may interfere with their pleasure. Other people have rights, too —the right to enjoy the beautiful flights and dives of cormorants. H. Guthrie-Smith and Edgar Stead are anglers, but they condem the stupid indiscriminate slaughter of shags. Saving Areas of Wild Wilderness “Bird-Lore” (published by The National Association of Audubon Societies, U.S.A.) mentions that all friends of the wilderness and wild life will welcome the order, recently issued, setting aside in Indian Reservations, twelve “roadless areas” and four “wild areas”. A “roadless area” is defined as “one which contains no provision for the passage of motorized transportation and which is at least 100,000 acres in forested country and at lean 500,000 acres in non-forested country” “Wild areas” are defined as those that are sub-standard in size. Since, according to the National Resources Committee, there remai.i but 82 forest roadless areas and 29 non-forest roadless areas, it will be obvious that the protection of those on Indian lands marks an important forward step. The total area included in the newly protected roadless areas is 4,745,000 acres. According to the order issued by

John Collier, Commissioner of Indian Affairs, within these areas “it will be the policy of the Interior Department to refuse consent to the construction or establishment of any routes passable to motor transportation, including in this restriction highways, roads, truck trails, work roads, and all other types of way constructed to make possible the passage of motor vehicles.”

New Zealanders will have to be alert and active for the safeguarding of certain areas of wilderness against roads which often open the way for vandalism.

Germany’s Protection of Birds of Prey.

It is reported that Germany has recently taken drastic steps to save her birds of prey, after having allowed them to be persecuted for many years. Why has there been a change? Largely because hawks and owls became so rare as to cease to be a factor in the maintenance of many natural balances and trouble promptly developed. The mouse plague in the upper Rhine Valley during 1931 and 1932 served to call attention to the situation. In the case of this plague, numbers of raptors were eventually drawn from considerable distances and concentrated in the area. These birds effectively solved a problem where the human means had failed.

In 1933 the pole-trap was completely outlawed and a campaign of education begun. By order of the Minister of Education, pupils must be taught “the importance of hawks and owls in the economy of nature as well as their contributions to the picturesqueness of nature.” Copies of ‘Our Native Protected Birds of Prey’ are required to be in every school library. A Chat on Conservation. Jay N. Darling, a well-known na-ture-lover of the United States of America, has been giving some good radio chats on conservation in a manner which has plenty of point for New Zealanders. “Education on the subject of conserving our natural resources is one of the most needed projects which confronts us”, he said. “Thirty million youths go to school each day and learn why Hannibal I crossed the Alps, but there isn’t a ! comprehensive text book on conservation available for the public schools in the United States. Our Commiss- ; ioner of Education, John W. Studei baker, has put in his budget for the last three years the 35,000 dollars necessary to compile a series of text books fcr national use in the public schools. And for three yec.rs, with sickening regularity, it has been cut out by Congress and the budget directors.

“Meanwhile, because a small organized group of real estate promoters ask d for it, Florida got 100,000,000 dollars to build a yacht canal. And, out on the Columbia River, they got 300.000,000 to build dams in the Columbia River.

“To three thousand cattle and sheep men was parcelled out the last remainder of our Public Domain, your land and mine A hundred and forty million acres were given to them for perpetual use for grazing. On that 140,000,000 acres are the last remain-

ing hereditary ranges of many of our finest big game species”, it is the old old story of the long i strong drive of well-organized selfish I st c Jonal interests against the welfare , of the un-organized general public. In “School Life” (an American mag- ' azine), Erie Bathurst remarks:— “To . teach the child to love nature, to consider the welfare of his neighbour, to . employ wisely his goodly heritage of I natural resources, and to pass this I heritage as intact as pruden 4 use j allows to the next generation—that is

“To help pupils, especially those be- - lov the sixth grade, to become con- ; serve tion conscious, more books should i be prepared by talented children's | authors; or the present geographies, | readers, and books on science should ’ he revised to include conservation I facts”. i