MOLESWORTH STATION

Press, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22112, 7 June 1937, Page 4

MOLESWORTH STATION

TO THB EDITOB Of THE PRESS. Sir, —Several points seem to arise in this correspondence from common problems confronting those whose country is similar to that of the abandoned Molesworth Station. One fact mentioned by Mr Bernard Tripp is a difficulty shared by a big majority of South Island runholders. It is the very unfair manner in which many of the runs have been cut up so as to render them dangerous and unprofitable as winter grazing areas. As he mentions, the snow losses on such places are great, and little effort seems to have been made in the past to rectify the matter. Surely it is to the interests of the Lands Department to see that a high country run has a sufficient area of grazing land on the lower levels, where the stock may be wintered without the constant fear of heavy snowfalls and of the tremendous consequent losses. After the wool has been taken from the sheep, the dipping is over successfully, and the sheep are in good condition, it is with a doubtful and uneasy mind that the high country man turns out his flock for the winter. How many of them will not live to produce him another fleece or to add to his surplus for selling in the coming season? It is only natural that sheep bred on the higher levels will make out to the top of the run unless there is a fence to prevent them from doing so; and it is these blocks, fenced off from many of the larger blocks of high grazing land, that render much of the back country useless in winter and are, in themselves, hardly capable of carrying sufficient stock to make them payable concerns. Even the strongest of merino flocks have very little chance of surviving a heavy tail of snow when they are locked in for days without feed of any description, and then very often only the tops of the tussocks are uncovered. Should a poor unfortunate animal become embedded in a drift, the destructive kea makes his attack; and all chance of the sheep's return to the shearing shed is gone. When the city labourer, whose work takes him out of doors, wakes on a cold, wet morning, he says to himself, "No work, and £1 lost"; but when the high country runholder wakes on a similar morning he says, "More work, and hundreds of pounds lost" If the labourer's loss was in comparison with that of the sheep farmer in the high country, labourers would be as scarce as high country runholders will be in the not-so-distant future, unless some measure is taken by those in authority to improve the now hopeless position.— Yours, etc., SNOWDRIFT. Kaikoura, June 4, 1937.