Preponderance Of Radiata Problem

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31017, 24 March 1966, Page 18

Preponderance Of Radiata Problem

(New Zealand Press Association)

ROTORUA, March 22.

The preponderance of radiata in pineplanting programmes in New Zealand is a matter for concern in high places,, according to the Conservator of Forests, Rotorua, Mr D. Kennedy.

In an address to a symposium on pine forestry in Rotorua today, Mr Kennedy spoke of the dangers of a “one-species” forest economy, but said that acceptable alternatives to the Radiata in the pine field seemed few. The answer was over to the research workers, he said. Mr Kennedy said the Forest Service had persisted with the establishment of substantial areas of other pines during an era when everyone else was planting Radiata and little else.

This fact was due not only to conservatism but to a district of “vast monocultures,” he said.

“The dangers faced by our pine forests on sites considered optimum had been depicted harrowingly enough by world authorities; bad siting of a one-species forest economy could almost certainly provide to a fuse leading to wholesale disaster.” Mr Kennedy said the outbreak of war in 1939, the start of State sawmilling in exotics in 1940, the sirex wasp epidemic of the late 1940’s and the forming of the F.R.I. in 1948, all influenced the use—or more the non-use —of other pines. Higher Rating

The findings of end use and research had undoubtedly given Radiata pine a higher rating than it enjoyed even in the days of the afforestation boom, all the expense of other species (Douglas fir excepted). “The tendency to plan for 70 per cent plus of Radiata in current planting programmes is a matter for concern in high places,” he said. “It could be current dothistroma (fungus) visitation will alter our thinking in this respect, although acceptable

alternatives in the pine field seem few.

“Find us a species—it need not necessarily be pine—from which seed can be collected in quantity any month of the year, which can be readily grown to plantable size in seven to eight months, which transplants readily, grows with agricultural speed on a wide range of sites, is moderately frost hardy, survives abuses by deer, opossums and pigs, responds favourably to silvicultural intervention, yields a general purpose timber at 35 years or less and on clear felling regenerates freely. “If, on the side, the research people can also inbreed a tendency to natural branch occlusion, natural durability, and a figure comparable with North Island heart rimu, we would have species more desirable than any we’ve got now,” he said.