I REFER to a letter by Mr D. K. Pollard headlined, ''Indifference of park wardens'' (South China Morning Post, November 11).
There are 120 park wardens in the Agriculture and Fisheries Department.
They are responsible for a wide variety of duties in 21 country parks and three special areas covering 41,320 hectares of land (some 40 per cent of the total land area in Hong Kong).
Their duties include manning seven visitor centres and 21 warden posts, in providing information and assistance to the visitors, running various publicity and countryside education programmes, leading education walks, patrolling barbecue and picnic sitesand walking trails, and carrying out law enforcement work.
The park wardens work in shifts throughout the year.
On weekends and public holidays, an average of four or five park wardens are deployed in each country park to cover areas where the majority of visitors are concentrated, including visitor centres, barbecue sites, picnic sites, Family Walks and Nature Trails, etc.
As a result, few park wardens are available for patrol in remote areas and hiking trails in country parks.