FORESTRY RESERVE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 290, 7 December 1937, Page 13

FORESTRY RESERVE.

LARGE GRAZING AREA.

LEASE CANCELLED. (From Our Correspondent.)' CHEISTCHURCH, Monday. A large area of high country in North Canterbury, which has been in use for grazing sheep since about 1849, will po out of production at the end of next February. The area, 58,000 acres of leasehold on the north bank of the Hlirunui liivcr. i<* by far the biggest part of the well-known Glens of Tekoa station, which has been in the possession of the MeT?ae family since the earliest days of sheep farming in the South Island. The pro«rnt owner of the property. Mr. \V. W. McT?ae, has been notified officially that the grazing lease for the land has been cancelled, and that the land in future will be a forestry reserve. In February the sheep at present kept on the leasehold property will be mustered for the last time, taken to Culverden, and sold. Menace of Wild Sheep. The leasehold property in recent yeare has been used to carry approximately ■WOO dry sheep a year. Men have also had to be employed to keep down rabbits nnd deer and an even bigger menace, wild sheep, which, on occasions, have multiplied so rapidly that men have had to be employed on contract to exterminate them.

In fare of the present heavy costs of running hijrh-coimtry prizing areas, y\r. MfTJno snid he did not much rejrret tlio l"sri of the country; hut he wae (MiHPined aliout the Government's intent ions In it<> rejrarcT. In liis opinion. on tho area would not cherk shingle slides, which, he underftood, was the Government'* aim; surface sowing was the eyetem he had practised, as had his family hefore him.

Including the leasehold area, now lost, and the freehold, of some 20,000 acres, the property etretche* along the north bank of the Hurunui for more than 25 miles.