ENEMIES OF OUR FORESTS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 207, 2 September 1936, Page 20

ENEMIES OF OUR FORESTS.

Your articles on forestry, in which you stress the urgent necessity for preserving our indigenous forests, are always welcome. Probably no other newspaper in New Zealand has done so much to promote an interest, now happily increasing, in our native flora. The recent article by "J.C." on Arbor Day was a real gem. and with great advantage could have been read at every Arbor Day function. Some time ago you commented approvingly in an editorial on the that all protection has been removed from "the forest outlaw." While heartily endorsing all you say regarding deer, I should like to emphasise that whereas, over the greater part of the Auckland province, the deer menace is non-existent, equal damage to the remaining areas of bush is being done by cattle, and to a less extent by sheep and pigs. More than half the North Island was covered at one time by wonderful forests, of which only a vestige remains, but this destruction I was not the work of deer. The settler, | not the sawmiller, has been the principal I agent in the elimination of our forests. Following the felling and burning of] the bulk of the bush is the perhaps more J insidious, because the less obvious, | destruction by stock of the few remain- 1 ing areas left standing. So that to the average Northerner your editorial regarding the mountain forests of central North Island and of »the South Island, valuable though it is, has no more than an academic interest. It has never been impressed fully on his mind that cattle, having free range in the bush, are every whit as destructive as deer.

No other part of New Zealand has suffered so much from the effects of stupid forest desecration a$ North Auckland, and the public conscience, and its intelligence, must surely be affected as year by year floods and slips take their toll. In the public economy every area of bush is pressingly needed, and the main remedy lies in the hands of the settler, who ha<> a public duty in the matter, rather than with the Government, which in the last resort must rely on the help and sympathy of the settler in applying any measures devised for the preservation of our bush. To guard against damage by stock, all areas of bush should be securely fenced off, and, secondly, no further bush felling should be permitted except under license, it being a condition of such that all other portions of a holding are already cleaned up and producing to their maximum capacity. The problem is a real one, and for the economic well-being of New Zealand, and particularly of the North, it requires to be grappled with resolutely. Such a job needs a public man to express home truths in a style that the public will understand —and then take heed. In conjunction with the preservation of existing forests, reafforestation of certain areas should be undertaken. H.W.B.