THE PASSING OF OUR FORESTS.

Evening Post, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 104, 29 October 1909, Page 6

THE PASSING OF OUR FORESTS.

When the Government announced its proposal to appoint a Royal Commission to report upon the timber industry, we suggested that the subject of afforestation would provide material for an enquiry of far greater value than the other aspects of the timber question with which tho commissioners were asked to deal. The elaborate report on Forestry in New Zealand, which has been prepared by the Lands Department and submitted to Parliament, does, however, furnish conclusive proof that the Government is fully alive to the momentous importance of a question which is now attracting the anxious attention of almost every Government in the world. In this case, at any rate, the order of reference is wide enough. To expedite the process of deforestation and to regulate the present troubles of the market may be said to have been the principal objects of the Timber Commission. How to conserve and renew our forests with a' view to 'the requirements of the country fifty or a hundred years hence is the problem which has been engaging the attention of the experts of the Lands Department, and has resulted in the valuable report now made public. The scope of the enquiry is indicated by the opening paragraph of the letter with which the Under-Secretary of Lands transmits the report to the Premier. "Some time ago," he writes, "you expreEsed a wish that such a report should be prepared, dealing not only with the state of our indigenous forests and the conditions of the timber industry (as had been done on several previous occasions), but also with the whole question of forest supply and, demand, the utilisation of our timbers, the need ior preservation of forest areas, the likelihood of our resources being assisted in any great measure by supplies from abroad, and the steps that have been taken to supplement the local supply by raising and planting trees in the State nurseries and plantations." We have spoken of this letter as addressed to the Premier. As a matter of fact, it is addressed to "The Right Hon. Sir J. G. Ward, P. 0., K.C.M.G., Minister for Lands and Commissioner of State- Forests." Sir Joseph Ward has taken his functions as Minister for Lands so lightly that it is probable that many well-informed persons are not aware that he holds the portfolio, and there must be very few who know that he is also Commissioner of State Forests ; or, indeed, that there is any such officer in existence. The report now under review will be gratifying evidence to the public that there is a Commissioner of State Forests, and that he takes his position seriously. It also shows that he has an able staff at his command who seem fully capable of doing justice to all branches of a great subject. It is long since we met with a Stave document which gave us greater pleasure, for though come of its 118 pages are for the expert only, the greater part of them are of a character to attract and interest the ordinary reader. On one point at any rate it is certain to convince him. The first cross-heading of the preface is "Importance of Subject," and that lesson at any rate will be deeply impressed upon even a casual reader of the report. The danger with which New Zealand is faced has, as we are informed in this paragraph, been grappled with for many generations in France and Germany, but has attracted little attention in these younger lands until quite lately. "In the New World, including the Americas and Australasia/ we are told, "it has only recently been recognised that what wm thought to be a

supply of timber sufficient for all probable requirements for future generations is barely adequate to meet current demands and the probable requirements of the ensuing half-century." With such a danger staring us in the face it is certainly high time to be up and doing, but we must reserve for future treatment the recommendations of the report under this head as well as its review of the conditions and piospects of the samo problem in other lands.