WAIPOUA'S FUTURE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 259, 1 November 1932, Page 6

WAIPOUA'S FUTURE.

Bargaville, one-time centre of New Zealand's greatest timber business, appears to be the seat of the agitation for milling the Waipoua kauri forest. The tradition of chop and saw everything dies hard. The sawmilling and allied interests are restive at the sight of a grand kauri tree in its prime or its old age; no kauri to them is a good kauri until it is undergoing the process of cross-cutting into logs. Curious, this state of mind which knows no way of appreciating the noblest thing that grows except in terms of superficial feet. The real object in the effort to preserve. Waipoua is ignored by these cut-it-out advocates. Waipoua is a great national tree museum, a national treasure whose value lies in the living picture it presents of a true, untouched forest. Here Nature for thousands of years has reproduced itself. It will go on reproducing itself if it is left alone; the one thing necessary is to guard it from fire. One of the strange suggestions emanating from the sawmill country is that the kauri should be "helped" by the removal of such trees as the tree fern and the taraire, which are alleged to shut out the light. The fact is that the taraire, which is so often found on the outskirts of kauri forests, is really a protection to the young kauri trees. It is Nature's screen, and Nature seems to have known what she is about for the last few thousands of years.

Not only Auckland people but all h'ew Zealanders who appreciate this kauri forest at its right value, and the scientific world, too, should resist by every possible means this revived threat against Waipoua. The "Star's" editorial plea that the forest should be regarded as a sanctuary should be backed up by official action. The place will never be safe while it is under the State Forest Service, which is concerned wholly with the commercial side of forests. It should be proclaimed a State sanctuary and such regarded as for ever tapn against the ea>r*aller. .l/i ■:. . :'. .": ~ : ": : .:. ■.•"."^α