DESTRUCTION.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 97, 24 April 1940, Page 15

DESTRUCTION.

LAND AND FOREST.

WHY COMPLAIN OF FLOODS? STRONG HAND NEEDED. (By -T.C.) Another winter is close 11 {><• u us, ami yet there is no sign of any effort to stop the ne\er-cea~ing assault by man upon the timbered highlands ti|>on which t lie safety of much of • the country de|>ends. Sawniillers are working to their full capacity in forests which should never lie touched. Mountainous country and the watersheds of many rivers are lieinji stripped of their protection. F.very scrap of lmsliland that can he turned to commercial account is in a fast process of diminution, and 110 effort is made to preserve the young forest that would if saved and protected reproduce the original species of timber trees. The Xortli Island timber-milling lias been carried far beyond the danger limit. The time calls for the gradual transference of timber-supply operations to the South Tsland. which must now become the main source of building material. Man Begins It. More urgent still is the necessity for considering the problem of land saving. The agents of destruction are always at work. We need not fear the forces of Nature unless man begins the work, by clearing off the sheltering forest from places which to any intelligent eye should be tapu against axe and saw and lire. Surely New Zea landers. especially the people of the middle part of the North Island, have had a sufficiently painful lesson on the folly of continuing the hreakiiig-in and l>reak'ng-up process. But what has been lone, or is being done, to stay or reverse the- go-as-you-please methods of landholders and timber-getters, which have brought U|M>n the country erosion of the hills, tin' ghastly spoiling of huge areas of the country, and the flooding of the rivers and the destruction of roads and raihvav lines? Action, Not Talk. The Public Works Department is overwhelmed with jobs of repair, but it cannot restore tlie country's garment of protection, its shield against affronted Nature. There is la Ik of expert committees or commissions of investigators, but surely we have all the evidence we need; vastly more than we need. The causes and the proofs of damage are clear, and remedies, are equally clear. Some action is needed, lievond the mere rebuilding of roads and railways and houses. I he first step, as has l>een explained repeatedly by those well qualified to advise, is to stop at the earliest possible moment those timber-milling operations which are so obviously a peril to the safety of the high land and low. The next is to remove stock from the high and broken country where the fore-t has in too many places been prcearioiisl v replaced by grass and weeds, then to forbid further burning off of \egetatiou. whether bush, so-called scrub, or in->ock. First things first: everything must give place to the saving of'the land it -elf. Those key places of the land, the .wasting hills,and the;furiouslv Hooding rivers, imist be. attended to;' and the only way is this way. continuously dinned into the ears of the Government: let the land lie brought back into its native vegetation. It can be done; it will not be easy; necessarily it will extend over a long period. lint it can be done, and New Zealanders would like to see a beginning made. Complete Powers Necessary. A dictator is not always an enemy and a nuisance. Jn emergencies he can be the saviour of his country. A state of national emergency now exists, quite apart from the war. This is the moment for a bold administrator charged with the special duty of restoring what outraged Nature lias damaged by wa v of punishment. Petty party politics aside. Mr. Semple is the kind* of man I admire for his downright methods and his disregard of criticism when lie is convinced he is oil the right track. I admired. too. an administrator who was his opposite pole in politics, the late Sir Francis Bell, the father of the State Forest Service. If he had had his way —and lie was a man of wide and long vision—a great deal of the land that has been deforested in the King Country and the Upper Wanganui watershed would be wearing its protective garment of thick bush to-dav. Sir Francis would have had his way but for his colleagues' timid policy of expediency and deference to "interests." If a Semple were given the free hand that he would need, he could do more to save and l'estore this shockingly abused land than any other man in sight. The Rivers. A test piece for such a restorer would l>e the Wanganui River watershed, where settlers and timber concerns have had their will of the protective forests. Or, perhaps first of all, the Manawatu Gorge, with its road and railway blocked periodically by sliding slopes and tumbling cliffs, which the torrent l>ears away in yellow floods to silt up the lower lands. Settlers' fires at both ends of -tl.e gorge began this ruin by destroying tile protective vegetation. A strong administrator, with power to call in all needful help and advice, both in and outside the Government, and a man who doesn't care a button for opposition from any quarter, could get things done. Without such a man. so empowered, the job seems hopeless. The 6anie old game of sectional interests, the same old speech-making and "taihoa." the same cry of ruined land and ruined farmers, rear after rear.