New Zealand’s first chief soil conservator and a past teacher at Napier Boys’ High School, Mr Douglas Campbell, has been honoured with the installation of a bench seat in Tutira Country Park.
The commemorative seat has been funded by donations held by Mr Noel Sutherland and Mr Stafford Ball, both former colleagues of Doug Campbell.
The seat has been placed in the arboretum area overlooking Lake Tutira, with views of the landscape that prompted so much of Mr Campbell’s work.
Doug Campbell had a post graduate degree in agricultural science and was teaching science courses at Napier Boys’ High School (1936–44) when two significant floods did considerable damage in the region.
Following the Kopuawhara floods and Esk Valley floods of 1938, Mr Campbell, as secretary of the Hawke’s Bay Erosion Control Committee, lobbied for legislative change.
He ran newspaper campaigns and personally lobbied parliamentarians to highlight the amount of soil that was being lost out to sea with each flood. Farmers were taking so many trees out of the landscape that the thin soils could not cope with storms and slid off the hillsides.
The roads board at the time was an important supporter of legislative change as they were concerned about the danger of slips blocking roads.
In 1941 the government passed the Soil Conservation and Rivers Control Act and a council was set up to oversee catchment boards and flood control works. This role included regulating burning and setting rates. Farmers were worried that the new law would affect their livelihood and farming practices, particularly burning bush and scrub which was a common farm management practice that often left the sky black with smoke and had a major impact on land cover, bird and insect life and water quality.
Doug Campbell continued to work to educate farmers about better soil conservation methods through farm demonstration days.
He chaired the Soil Conservation and Rivers Control Council Advisory Committee on Agricultural Aviation as well and in October 1948 he initiated the first aerial top-dressing trial at Ohakea air base.
Mr Campbell was presented with numerous awards for his research and work, including an honorary fellowship of the New Zealand Institute of Agricultural Science and honorary membership of the Aviation Industry Association of New Zealand. He died in 1969. |