FORESTRY SCHEMES

Dominion, Volume 26, Issue 219, 12 June 1933, Page 8

FORESTRY SCHEMES

Work for Eight Hundred Unemployed Men PROVISION IN THE NORTH Dominion Special Service. Auckland, June 10. Much useful work will be done this winter by parties of unemployed now being drafted to several forestry areas in the Auckland district. Die men are being drawn from Auckland and the various towns in the province, and when all the camps being established by the Forestry Department are completed about 800 relief workers will be engaged. The largest work is that at Taupo, where about 500 men will be required to carry out the tree-planting to be done as an extension of the afforestation westward from the Kainguroa Plains. The Unemployment Board, which is supplying the labour, has this week sent 82 men to the Taupo camps, 13 from Auckland, 16 from Gisborne and 53 from the South Auckland district. , , , Replanting Forest Land.

Another important scheme is that being carried out at Tairuh, where worked-out kauri forest land is being replanted with pines. Considerable planting has been done in this area and the 160 relief workers who will be sent there will continue the work. Six camps have been established at the Whangamata end of the forest area, and already 82 relief workers have been sent to the district, while 16 of the Forestry Department’s permanent foremen and leading hands are there to lead and instruct the newcomers.

There will be employment for about 40 men in the Maramarua plantation, near Waerenga, where they will be mostly engaged on completing the small amount of planting to be done. This plantation has an area of upward of 13.000 acres. Similar work will be done at the Riverhead plantation of 11,000 acres, where about 65 men will complete the department’s programme. Pines to be Planted.

Some of the open country between the Waipoua Kauri Forest and the west coast is to be planted with pinus caribaea, and a camp is to be opened on the area next week, when 24 relief workers will be drawn from Rawene. Another scheme which will absorb about eight men will be the opening bp and improving of tracks through the Puketi forest, north of Okaihau, while another six will be employed in the Puhipuhi plantation, between Whangarel and the Bay of Islands, where 1200 acres of trees are well established. In each of the camps established by the Forestry Department a dining room and cookhouse are provided, and the men are accommodated in tents of the Public Works type, fitted with wooden floors, where this is possible, and each supplied with an iron fireplace. Each of these tents accommodates two men. who can make their quarters very comfortable. The married men drafted to these camps by the Unemployment Board are to receive from 25/- to £2 a week, while single men will be paid 10/- a week. These wages will be paid by the board and the Forestry Department is to pay for transport and to provide board.