Potential N.I. Forest Income $1500m

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31627, 13 March 1968, Page 16

Potential N.I. Forest Income $1500m

(N.Z. Press Association)

HASTINGS, March 12.

If half of the suitable forest land in the North Island was producing last year it would have earned New Zealand an income of slsoom. the Minister of Land and Forests, (Mr D. Maclntyre) said in Havelock North last night. Addressing the Havelock North Rotary Club, Mr MacIntyre said that an American researcher had recently estimated that 20 million acres of North Island land was suitable for forests.

The Director-General of Forests (Mr Poole) had halved this estimate, and with 10 million acres producing, an income of slsoom would have been earned last year, he said. “This would still leave 10 million acres for sheep and fruit,” said Mr Maclntyre. “In the last 15 years there had been a spectacular increase in the selling of logs. Last year plantings were increased from 21,000 acres to 27,000 acres. There was a need for an extra 1 million acres by the year 2000. With the upsurge in unemployment last winter the forests had provided work for an extra 1400 men.

“This year we are geared to increase this number," he said. “If we run out of seedlings we will go down the fire breaks and dig up wild ones and plant them.*”