VALUE OF THE FORESTRY DEPARTMENT

Dominion, Volume 14, Issue 261, 29 July 1921, Page 9

VALUE OF THE FORESTRY DEPARTMENT

VIEWS OF FARMERS’ UNION BREST-

DENT. Some observations upon forestry were made by the president of the New Zealand Farmers’ Union (Mr. G. W. Leadley) in liis address to the conference of the 'union yesterday. Earlier in his address, Mr. Leadley had condemned the multiplication of State Departments. "I would exclude from tho sentiments then expressed the Department of Forestry, ' he said. “I do hot think there is any inconsistency in this, because, (honestly, I do believe that this Department is needed and is calculated to be of immense benefit to tho country. “For fifty-eight years I have lived on the great Canterbury Plain. In my youth and early manhood I was familiar with its vast treeless, objectless expanse, I have seen it emerge from that condition and gradually assume its present form, and I know and appreciate the difference. I can understand w’.iy it was that the Koran commends to the especial favour of Heaven the man who plants a tree. I am fixed in this opinion that the Department of Forestry is necessary, 'and. will, under proper and efficient direction, and with adequate support, bo one of our most useful and profitable ventures. “We may sometimes learn from our enemies. The other day in a work on this subject I read that before the war Germany ihad 25 per cent, of its total area- under State forests, that IQO.OOD persons wore employed in connection with them, and that tho profit to the State was eighteen million pounds sterling a year. "We need not, however, go to Germany for examples when wo find the Motherland awaking to a sense of the great need of a more active and intelligent policy in regard to this matter. Two years sinco a Forestry Act was passed, a commission was appointed with largo powers and a grant of three-and-a-lhalf million pounds placed at its disposal. The setting up of an Imperial Forestry Bureau will enable the British Isles to get into touch with similar worli in other parts of tho Empire, and in this way there will Ixr a systematic and businesslike effort to develop and extend the timber resources of the Empire. When wo learn that last year Britain ■pent .£70,000.000 on imported timber this is necessary.”