DESTRUCTION AND RENEWAL.

Evening Post, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 107, 2 November 1909, Page 6

DESTRUCTION AND RENEWAL.

"It is a matter for distinct congratulation," writes the Under-Secretary for Lands in ihe preface to the valuable report on Forestry in New Zealand just issued by the Department, "that the Government of this Dominion has recognised the growing need for afforestation and regulation of timber-cutting for some time past. The New Zealand State Forests Act of 1885 was a commendable attempt to meet the difficulty, by insuring that the sale of timber from Crown lands and State forests should proceed' under careful supervision and without undue waste." It must be confessed that this is a very favourable statement of the case, even for official optimism. ' For many years past the Government of New Zealand has "recognised^ the growing need " for doing something towards the conservation and renewal of its forests, but the need has nevertheless been allowed to grow far more rapidly than the activity that was required to meet it. As long ago as 1876 the provident mind of Sir Julius Vogel procured the services of an expert of the Indian Forestry Department, Captain Campbell-Walker, to report upon our forests and draw up a scheme for their administration. The report appears, however, to have been duly pigeon-holed for a considerable period, and it was not until 1885 that the Act to which the Under-Secretary makes complimentary allusion was passed. But* the passing of an Act and its effective administration are unfortunately two very different matters. Pursuant to the States Forests Act, a department was established in 1886 to carry out its objects, and the late Professor Kirk was appointed the Conservator of State Forests. But after a life of three years the new department was sacrificed in the drastic scheme of retrenchment which was necessitated by the financial embarrassment of the colony, and the forests were once more allowed 'to look after themselves. There is now no Forestry Department, but there is a Forest Branch of the Lands and Survey Department, whose functions are confined to the raising of trues and the planting of forest reserves. It is to be hoped that the exhaustive report which has now been prepared by the department will so stimulate public attention to the subject that protective measures will soon be undertaken on a much larger scale and with more drastic powers. The gravity of the position caunot be ignored by anybody who i'«ad» the estimates in the report oi our prceeat tim-

ber resources, and of the demands that are being made upon them. Out of a total area, of 66,568,876 acres in New Zealand, the late Professor Kirk, in 1886, estimated the forest area at 21,196,966 acres. Since then rather more than 4,000,000 acres of forest have been destroyed, for tlie estimate of the present report is that there are now only 17,074,003 acres left. Eather more than half of this area is on unalienated Crown lands, 2,110,717 acres being represented by the permanent forests growing in the National Park, scenery and climatic reserves, and the like. The area of alienated forests is estimated to be just over 7,000,000 acres, of which nearly a million and a, half is said to be unfit for milling purposes. The total quantity of growing timber available of a character suitable for commercial requirements is about 33,000,000,000 superficial feet. The output ,of sawn timber for the past year exceeded 400,000,000 feet, and this amount, says the report, "will probably advance to an 'average of from 450,000,000 superficial feet, to 500,000,000 superficial feet, for the next fifty years, thereby giving an anticipated period of about forty years within which our indigenous forests can meet the full demand." We cannot quite follow the departmental mathematics here. Even at the" higher rate of consumption 33,000,000,000 feet ot timber ought to be good for sixtysix years, which represents about the limit of the most favourable of previous expert estimates. As against this rapid destruction, the report states that on the 31st March last the total area of land planted ( with forest trees was 12,175 acres, of which, 2709 acres had been planted during the previous year. The recent quickening oi the rate of renewal is the only satisfactory feature of this story, but the pace will have to be quickened still further before we shall bo even holding our own.