SOIL, RIVER AND BUSH

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 135, 10 June 1938, Page 6

SOIL, RIVER AND BUSH

ROYAL SOCIETY'S REQUEST

(By J.C.) Good will come out of the recent flood and erosion disasters if it makes this reckless and short-sighted generation think, and realise first causes. There are indications that at last people in authority are Ix-comm? seriously concerned. There i* hope in the opinion expressed by the engineer to the Waiapu County Council that the floods and ruin of hind and roads and bridges in his district would continually occur until reafforestation was carried out. There was wisdom in his view and lndief that half the country there should revert to bush. Down in the Manawatu country, particularly in the rich land near Palmerston Xorth city, the local bodies are complaining of erosion and tinkering with retaining walls and bank protection schemes. Apparently they look no further than their noses. They have not yet learned that the protection 'should begin in the upper reaches and that wide and thick belts of native forest should be cultivated on both side,- of the waterway, from the Hawke's Bay side of the gorge down to the sea. But what farmer could ever resist the temptation to sweep every bit of bush from the river banks? Grass is'so much more precious than trees nn d fern. The Wanganui River is being ruined in a different way. but from the same first cause. The bush is being ~t ripped from the high sources of srores of feeding streams, even up to the country at the edge of the Tongariro National Park. Twvnty-five sawmills are operating on that mountain watershed and adjacent hirli country. Sir Francis Bell up to his hist days held to his often-repeated idea for the preservation of a larce area of that key protection fore~t. But immediate commercial prolit nrev.ii's over all other arguments.

Xow the Royal Society of Xew Zealand (formerly the Xew Z:\iland Instituted, the leading scientific bodv in the Dominion, has

requested 11)0 (loveriunent to set liji n Royal Commission of competent persons to inquire and report into the preservation of the forosfa of the country and the incidence, eoittrol and prevention (if laud pro-don. At last! For years the "Star'' and many other newspapers' and ~ueh bodies as the Forest and Kird Protection Society have iirpcd one (Jovernment after another to pet into action on. thoso lines. Let us not be cynical about Royal Commissions. This one may really pet somethinp done.