"PREVENTION OR RUIN."

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 69, 22 March 1934, Page 6

"PREVENTION OR RUIN."

"Prevention or ruin" is the terse summing-up of the deer menace in the South Island by the Minister of Internal Affairs, who has just paid a visit to certain regions in South Westland. Now that the Minister in charge of the Department that is directly responsible, through actual personal inspection, has become alive to the dire seriousness of the damage done by deer, the scope of Government action already taken to cope with it may be sustained and enlarged until the measures become really effective. The stage has Iveen reached, and evidently Mr. Young realises it, where a shooting party here and there, the culling of herds, even the proclamation of warfare which, though open, is relatively unorganised, are not sufficient to copo with a grave situation. The damage done by the deer constitutes, in the Minister s own words, a national danger. For years past we have pointed out the danger Avhich the Minister has so clearly acknowledged. The danger means more than the eating out of our pasture lands; more than the spoliation of our forests 5 more even than the destruction of our alpine flora, which comprises some of the most beautiful as well as the most readily accessible in the world. If unchecked, it means total destruction of forests in infested areas, because the deer eat of every young thing in the bush, and the passing of forest growth means the complete alteration of the face of the countryside, with a change in climate. Minister says he has seen "places where the forest has gone and where the open valley land, once covered with grass, is now only a scrap-heap of boulders." Such conditions Avill be multiplied if adequate action is not taken. The South Westland forests, comprising the main divide of the South Island, and forming the source of large rivers, have ail important function in regulating the flow of water, and the prevention of erosion. Should these ranges be stripped of forests and ground vegetation, the character of the watershed woidd be changed. The hillsides would slip to fill up the valleys, and in a few years such effects of the weather would be enormous. Finally, while deer are condemned in the South Island, other animals as well as deer have been a curse in the North Island. Wild pigs and goats are almost as bad as an invading army. They destroy all in their path, and with goats the destruction is final. In some parts of the Coromandel Peninsula only dead trunks remain. If the Government is going to take the necessary sustained offensive against deer in the South Island, the same action should be taken in the North, where the threat is also serious.