AFFORESTATION IN NEW SOUTH WALES

Evening Post, Volume LXXXIV, Issue 112, 7 November 1912, Page 2

AFFORESTATION IN NEW SOUTH WALES

• I*ROM OOR OWN COftftRSPONDSNT.) SYDNEY, 2nd November. Perhaps some of our administrators have returned, f rom trips to New Zealand greatly impressed with the sight' of prisoners at work in connection with Government nurseries pf trees. At any rate a beginning will shortly be made in New South Wales with the employment of prisoners as p&rt of a scheme for sys- * tematio afforestation. It is intended- to i •allot such work only to prisoners whose I offences have not been crimes of violence, j The too rapid diminution of our local sources of timber supply and the seriousness of the outlook for tho future in this . regard seem likely to receive something like due attention. A Forest League has been started with its first branches in Melbourne and Sydney. Its purpose is to have matters kept up to the mark as regards the conservation of the forests of the Commonwealth, and the building up of our timber" resources. This league is really the outcome of recommendations made by a conference of the directors of forests of the "various States held a short time ago. By way of popular instruction' it is mentioned that all the wheels of British guns are made of Australian timber. It is also pointed out that ignorance in the past has led to the wholesale use for fencing purposes of valuable tim. ber which, if sent to Europe, would have been made ihto some of the finest furniture in the world. To this are added estimates showing that in a comparatively Bm&ll area in Victoria timber worth between £6,000,000 and £10,000,000 has been foolishly destroyed by people who think of trecß as merely a troublesome encumbrance of the ground.