TREE PLANTING.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 89, 8 January 1908, Page 2

TREE PLANTING.

WORK FOR THE UNEMPLOYED. Tree-planting 'is an industry well calculated .to meet the wants' of the Labour League and furnish work for • unemployed. Our timber resources are rapidly receding before the advance of settlement, nud for future years a local scarcity of timber is gonerally predicted. Two years • ago the Chief Forester estimated that New Zealand was using thirteen times as much timber per annum as tho artificial State-, forests could produce 'per annum when mature, forty or sixty years hence. At tho present time about 6810 acres of trees have been planted by tho Government, with a total of just over fifteen' million trees. The extension of the arqa, largely by means of prison labour, is proceeding at tho rate of not more than,, five million trees on 1800 acres per annum, and greater activity could well be displayed if necessary. A great part of tho labour of tree-planting is dono. during the winter months, when the demand for labour on ordinary farms is' least acute, and the work-is such as could fluctuate with varying supplies of labour without damage to stock. In providing wages for unemployed in this way to give them a mere start, the country would have the satisfaction of; knowing that it was accumulating a. source of much revenue iu the . years to come. The Chief Forester has estimated tho yield of milling timbor from tho artificial State forests, when mature, at about 20,000 feet per annum per acre. Tho value at present market prioes, when milled, works out at-over £100 per acre per annum.