UNKNOWN

Evening Post, Volume LXXIX, Issue 73, 29 March 1910, Page 6

UNKNOWN

"This sacrifice will bring retribution," was a recent comment of The Times in relation to the shortsighted Australasian practice of "improving" '.forest land by wholesale destruction of the native woods. The process is so gradual that it does not impress as it should tho resident who sees it year after year going on before his eyes ; but there are those who can look back forty or fifty years and recall the aspect of wooded hills, vocal with the song of native birds, now waste and barren, > scarred with landslips, not even affording pasture — an eyesore instead of a beauty. But it is those who have been almeut for years who are most painfully conscious of the change. A recent visitor who travelled through the country which he had left more than fifty years ago confessed to the shock it had given him to see the altered aspect of tho beauty-spots of days gone by. And it is a painful reflection that only a fraction of the lost timber has been ased for tho service of man. The people and Government of the country are not ignorant of the state of things, nor of the penalty that must one day be paid ; but as year after year passes the evil is intensified and the remedy becomes more difficult. The valuable report of the Forestry Department, presented <o the House last session, was commenced on by the press throughout the country, but it appears to have produced little if any practical result. The Under-Secretary for Crown Lands pointed # out that the greater part of the forest reserved by the State was really "reserved for future sawmilling," and that what might be considered permanent forest reserve amounted to about three per cent, of the area of the coun- | try, tho greater portion of this being j in the West land and Weft Coast Sounds districts. Naturalists and geographers have long raised their protest against indiscriminate forest destruction, and have pointed to terrible examples in other parts of the world. The facts are undeniable ; but the future is still being sacrificed for the sake of immediate and temporary gain. It is questionable whether in a coun. try so mountainous as our* deforestation would ever seriously affect the amount of rainfall, but its effects are destructive in another way. The natural provision by which the moisture is retained in the earth— t' -) thousand cheeks upon too swift a discharge of the surface drainage — these are removed, and the rainfall sweeps in a turbid torrent to the ocean, carrying with it acres of fertile soil, silting up river-beds and forming bars nt their mouths, while agriculture suffers by denudation of the rocky or clay base, as the alluvial Boil is swept away. Rivers cut destructively into ancient' flatß, sweeping sometimes round tho ends of bridges and forming new channels. Local bodies, ns well as private owners, on the banks of rivers like the Itangitikei and Manawatu, are already realising to their cost somo of the results of deforestation in loss of considerable areas of land and in expensive protective works to avert still further destruction. In the United States it is estimated that in five years from this one cause th| losses of agriculturists and others by floods have increased five-fold. Large treeless areas in China, once supporting a dense population, are now lying waste , Palestine, once "a land flowing with milk and honey," has but a ghadow of its old fertility, and some of the most barren deserts on tho earth's surface owe their aridity to the perversity of man in deranging the balance of Nature. With these object-lessons of history before us, is it not folly that we should longer delay action in two directions — first, in sternly repressing Irresponsible destruction and wanton waste; and, secondly, in following the example of Prussia on 4 other European countries in insisting on systematic afforestation in due proportion to tho timber cleared for actual use? Tho problem has become a worldquestion now that wood is not used as formerly only for timber or fuel purposes. The world's forests are now being pulped into paper at a rato so enormous as to threaten some countries with a timber famine; and il seems that the United States will boor be compelled to face the problem in an acute form. As yet- the pulping industry has not to be reckoned with here; but no one can say that enterprise may not one day be developed in thi» direction. In ono respect we are worse situated than any of the older lands. Some of the splendid native timbers are so slowgrowing, and require such special conditions, that it is practically impossible to replace them — in some cases it will be as much as wo can do to save them from total extinction. It behoves us, therefore, not to yield to the pressure of any commercial interest to such an extent as to allow it to rob the country of its natural advantages ; aud to insist on a scientific system of afforestation which shall secure, ns Prussia has done, that there shall be a continual succession of growing forests sufficient to supply from year to year all the timber required for home consumption.