DEER DESTRUCTION

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 118, 22 May 1939, Page 7

DEER DESTRUCTION

THE UREWERA COUNTRY

The necessity has arisen for the permanent placing of an officer of the Department of Internal Affairs in the Urewera Country whose principal duties will be the superintendence of official operations for the destruction of deer and also to attend to other matters which come within the province of the Department.

In an interview the Minister of Internal Affairs (the Hon. W. E. Parry) stated that explorations by officers showed the deer menace in the Urewera Country to be greater than most people acquainted with the district imagined. "The Urewera native bush," Mr. Parry said, "is rightly highly prized by New Zealanders as one of the finest and most picturesque areas of the kind in the Dominion. The Government views this bush as a national heritage of the people and we must do our best to keep it intact. With the assistance of the people, fires have been checked, but concentration on the destruction of deer, which are creating great damage to the trees and undergrowth, is- necessary. It has been decided to erect a house and stables at Ruatahuna, in the heart of the forest, for the man who is to take charge of operations." The Minister mentioned the large expenditure on the re-formation of the motor road through the Urewera Country to Lake Waikaremoana. That work ranked as one of the best in a long list of. roads either newly constructed or reconstructed in the Dominion, he said.