OUR NATIVE TIMBERS.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 26, 1 February 1926, Page 5

OUR NATIVE TIMBERS.

A VANISHING QUANTITY.

MUST RELY ON PLANTING.

(By Telegraph.—Own Correspondent.) DUNEDIN, this day. Captain L. Mclntosh Ellis, Director of the State Forest Service, in an address on "Our Timber Supplies," said, "The kauri is practically all gone, anct a great proportion of what is left is State-owned. Quantities of totara and matai are not considerable, and are chiefly concentrated in the central part of the North Island. The normal life of the white pine resources is not more than twelve years. Rimu to-day is the principal economic soft wood timber, but this timber must gradually give way in forty years to plantation and hardwood timbers. The total quantity of economically available softwoods, after deducting all areas of inaccessible, protection and climatic forests, is 25,000,000,000 feet, board measure. Hardwoods will only • function in the national timber problem as a subsidiary source of supply, because of their general distribution in mountain and plateau regions, and because, owing to their normal refractory qualities, they do not lend themselves readily to industrial constructional and building

Timber Consumption. "Over ninety per cent of New Zealand's demand, as that of all civilised ;countr ( tes, is for softwood," he continued. "Forest plantations carrying in the main immature and growing forests to the extent of over 170,000 acres, State-owned, occupying 80,000 acres, and the balance being held privately and by local bodies—yield at the present time only small, though gradually increasing, supplies. Estimating the present population of New Zealand at 1,350,000, the general annual per oaipita consumption of sawn timber alone, based on the average conditions, is 240 feet, board measure. It is interesting to note that the Australian unit consumption is only 153 feet board measure, and that over 42 per cent of the southern continent's requirements are imported, against an importation by New Zealand of only 19* per cent o"f her needs. A serious forecast, therefore, of future national timber requirements, based on the normal trend of population increase and on the development and expansion of intensive agriculture, and of secondary industry over a period of years, indicates that the gross national consumption of sawn forest produce (index factor) by the year 1965 will be 675,000,000 feet, "board measure, per annum (other products in proportion), and our virgin softwood resources will be economically exhausted by the-period 1965-70.

Increase the Plantations! "It is possible," Captain Ellis remarked, "to provide internally for our annual needs by the application of tried and proper methods of forest culture, but the State plantations will require to be of such dimensions as to take over the major burden of supplying raw material at that time. At "present there are SO,OOO acres of State plantations, and it has been recommended that this acreage be increased to 300,000, formation to be completed by the year 1935. The forest capital of these plantations and of other forests will, by the year 1960, yield an annual crop of 700 million feet.