DENUDING THE TARARUAS

Evening Post, Volume XCI, Issue 146, 21 June 1916, Page 12

DENUDING THE TARARUAS

Reference is made elsewhere in this issue to the manner in which the bush settler-is gradually fighting his way into the hill country formed by the lower slopes of ths Tararuas. In this connection many old settlers and others interested in the district sound a note, of warning.. Every tree felled on the hills, it is pointed out, means gradual destruction by floods of richer. land towards the sea, and following forest destruction many rivers, not only along the Manawatu line, but in other districts of New Zealand, have already worked great ha-vee in this way. Apart form the heavy cost of river protection, one acre of nch alluvial land thus lost is worth many acres'of steep hill country, the felling of which-has contributed to the. destruction. The loss is not only a private one, but a national one. . All bush growing on land which cannot be successfully fanned, says one authority, should be carefully preserved, and people prevented from attempting, to break in bush land which wi]! not hold grass permanently, and which will inevitably either go back to native undergrowth, or else, worse still, by the action of the rains, become denuded of all soil, .and thus 'assume a.'-.permanent' 'desert condition. '