RUINOUS FLOODS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 158, 6 July 1937, Page 6

RUINOUS FLOODS.

FOLLY OF BUSH DESTRUCTION.

(By J.C.)

The same old leeson is taught by Mother Nature every wet eeason, but no one profits by it. Floods, landslips, erosion of river banks, damage to farms, buildings, roads and railways make a sorrowful tale in the North Auckland country and many other parts, and no one apparently even makes any effort to mitigate the effects of the over-generous rainfall which is always to be expected at this time of the year. The floods are invariably attributed to the "exceptionally heavy downpour." That downpour occurs every winter and spring, with the customary tale of woe from the Xorth, of blocked communications, los.s of property and peril to life. The damage in some places becomes greater every year, naturally, because the destruction of the natural protective clothing of the land goee on as of old, wherever the settler and the sawmiller are at work. The "exceptionally heavy downpour" of which we hear eo often is not so much the cause of damage as the rapid run-off of water from the hille. The country has been so denuded of the protective forest that there ie nothing to hold the water back and slow down its distribution, no sponge of native vegetation to soak it up and allow it to feed the rivers in Nature's ancient way. Nothing Learned? The felling and milling or burning , of bush ie not, of course, carried on on so great a scale as in the past when sawmills were working everywhere from the Kaipara and Hauraki shores to Hokianga and Whangaroa. Most of the stripping-off of Northland's kauri and most of the deliberate destruction by fire of all kinds of timber occurred in the pioneer period. But the new generation apparently has learned nothing from the past. The sawmiller naturally looks only to the present, to immediate advantage. The condition in which he leaves the land ie nothing , to him. Ho is not compelled to replant or to help to regenerate the milled-over bush as he is in some other countries. As for the man who gets his living from the soil, the bueh has always been considered an encumbrance cluttering up the are-a that could be given to grass. He sees nothing in the undergrowth but eo much scrub to be burned off. That is the point of view of too many farmers, who read little either from books or the face of Nature. Tree planting ie done to some extent, and the tree* are the wrong kind. Exotics are melees for water-control purposes; such trees as pinus insignia kill the moss and feme and shrubs that should form the principal spongelike absorber of rainfall. The North American trees grown make for a quick run-off. The only plants suitable for soil protection are those that are native to the soil, and until an effort ie begun on a large scale to re-clothe the Xorth country with the original vegetation the land-ruin wiil continue unchecked. To Save the Standing Bush. But more important than replanting , is the strict conservation of all existing bush. North Auckland cannot afford to lose any more of it* standing bush. The tree fellers and timber sellers have had their own way with the North for more than a century. There is nothing for it, in my belief, but for the State to step in and stop all further felling there, whether of kauri or. of the lesser timbers. Once a bush is cut into for kauri, the late Sir Edwin Mitchelson used to eay, it 5* done for. Of course, there would be the complaint that business enterprise wa* interfered with and workers' livelihood taken from them. But that livelihood from timber would be short in any event- The worker could be more usefully and profitably and permanently employed in forest culture than in such a temporary occupation as milling the last remaining vestiges of Northern bush. In Other District*. The North surely provides a lesson for other parts of the island. The lowlands and slopes of the Bay of Plenty from the Rangitaiki to Opotiki will suffer once the Urewera Country bush is attacked. The King Country has had some experience of the effects of excessive timber felling, and it will suffer disastrously if the present interference with the sources of so many rivers is continued at tlie present rate. Obvernment authority apparently does not yet cover the protection of mountain country. A few months ago T saw. when travelling over (lie Knimni Rome by the road from Matamata to Tiinranga. tlie beginning of construction of a new sawmill close to the summit twelve hundred feet above sea level. The Kaimai i* part of the great backbone range which extends from the Coromandel Peninsula to tli 0 Mnmnku plateau above liotorua. It is the watershed for innumerable streams nml several lnrge rivers. At the very top (lf»OOft). in the la*t remnants of forest, a beautiful little river cascades down past tli« road: inland, and near by on the other sale another stream issues from the bush; all (lie way from tl:pro to the Tauranga shores you see the rivers increase in volume. Too much forest hflri been felled there alreadv; there are small ragwort-infested farms on the slopes that should never have been cleared of luihli. N'mv one of tlie finnl chapters in tlie spoiling of the range is about to be written.