TUSSOCK TO TREES

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 71, 25 March 1933, Page 14

TUSSOCK TO TREES

KAINGAROA CHANGES

BROWN PLATEAU NOW GREEN

HUGE MAN-MADE FOREST

(By "Traveller.")

To afforest an area of 200,000 acres of tussock and scrub land—about equal to the area of the great Wairarapa plain watered by the Waiohine, Waingawa, aad Euamahunga Rivers—represents a considerable alteration o£ the face of Nature. To produce in thirty? years, on the formerly treeless Kaingfj.. roa Plains, a single block of exoVi.c trees covering 312 square miles—nof far short of half the area of Stewart Island—obviously must have a mean--ing in terms of weather, of bird aitij insect life, and in terms of natural cw i.ditions generally. Man cannot so alfei the landscape without producing physical changes, as well as economic :resuits.

plain watered by the Waiohine, Wai- .' ngawa, and Ruamahunga Rivers—represents a considerable alteration o£ the face of Nature. To produce in thirty? years, on the formerly treeless Kaingfj.roa Plains, a single block of exoVi.c trees covering 312 square miles—nii'f. far short of half the area of Stewart Island—obviously must have a mean--ing in terms of weather, of bird aitij insect life, and in terms of natural cw iditions generally. Man cannot so alter the landscape without producing p.h}»sical changes, as well as economic :results. The area planted by the State ' oil the Kaingaroa plateau is in itself ye j-y large, but the over-all measurenia' nts of this huge plantation—includ ing roads, tracks, firebreaks, etc.—an greater still. If you add to the total given above 910S acres for waste Jiand, reserves, etc., 21,016 acres for firebreaks, and a balance-to-be-plan tf xl of 101,172 acres, you bring the ragg? egate gazetted area to 329,000 acres, pro bably one of the biggest plantation ua.its in the Empire, perhaps the bigge:s/- This Kaingaroa plantation not only sf retches all the way from , the Sob orua-Te Whaiti-Waikarernoana Eoad sol ithward to the Napier-Taupo road, but actually overlaps those two highways, having an unplantcd area north of thi i former and another unplantcd area isouth of the latter. ALREADY 50 MILES OF|' TREELINED ROAD. When the scheme is comple t« the forest of pines will be not far short of a hundred miles long. AlreaiJy you can travel on' one of its interj or roads, through established plan/;: ition, for fifty miles. The total length of interior roads and tracks is about* sjbc hundred miles. Keedless to add, <cor'isiderations of fire prevention close th<>se to the public. These road's and itra <eks aie the veins of a mass of forest -which, already in its incomplete form, may be summed up as fifty miles long with, an average width of six miles. Such figures speak for themselves. When the conversion to forest of waste, treeless land is proceeding on such, a, scale, * tVie people of other countries, if not M Ijbse of our own, take notice. Kaingaroa is the large jt of the plantations of the State 1 /.'oresfc Service. The next largest is Bat moral in North Canterbury (24,000 aci-f >s). After that comes Golden Downs in ' Nelson (22,000 acres).. The total of all State plantations is 590,000 acres ([grass area), of which 347,500 acres h/vve been planted. Kaingaroa has a mi nimum altitude of 500 feet above sea 10- v -el, a maximum of 2451. The base eami >, Kaingaroa, is at 1800 feet. Though t he plantation does not lie due north an d south (but rather runs from north-ea/ ;t to south-west) it stretches over more , than half a degree of latitude. Its re ost northerly point is at 38 degrees .^S minutes, its most southerly point is : at 38 degrees 55 minutes, a difference of 37 minutes. In longitude the ranf ;e is from 176 degrees 5 minutes to 174 degrees 45 minutes. The political support which treeplanting has reee tved in New Zealand in recent years is due probably not so much to' love of trees (which, is Tare among politician s) or to faith in the economic retura from trees (a matter which most poli ticiaris to not attempt to understand) as to a desire to Teduce. unemplo .yment. Tree-planting represents one- of the comparatively easy ways in ■ which to provide relief labour. Apa licy which aims to make public money ■. go as far as possible in wages with tb. c least deduction, for material costs s ,nd overhead costs, has found tree-pi anting useful. Otherwise, it is probable that the State would not have been a? .lowed to plant. nearly so many trees. . There is a much, stronger political pul't towards spending public money on duplicated transport than towards spe riding it on forests as a long term investment. But this political valuat ion is a theory apart from .the- merits cjf tree-planting, and from its weath'ej: aspect and economic importance- b^Q posterity,

A IRA .NSFOBMED COUNTRY,

Forty j ears ago the many miles of pumice lj big between the RotoruaWaiotapu -Taupo Eoad and the Rangitaiki Val .ipy carried uo exotic trees and practical ly no native trees.' It was a tussock j md scrub plateau; under successive s Jiowers of erupted matter, old forests b .ad been burned, in some places 30 feet' deep. Beyond the Rangitaiki and stw itching eastward therefrom to Waikan smoana and the East Coast were the abt mdant mountain forests of the TTrewei a. But the monotony of the plateai t was eye-wearying. Now it is an mr mense sea of pines with, huge s'tretct ies of the renowned Douglas fir (Oregc m pine) which in one place covers a bloc .k of thousands of acres as a pure stan<J , besides participating in the exotic covering of other blocks. The word transformation is often misap-. plied , but nothing less describes what has J Happened to the Kaingaroas. Tb .c real beginning of the Kaingaroa plan (;ing was in 1901, though Waiotapu plan .Cinq with prison labour of course pre«.-(>ded that. In 1901 the Lands Deparf.rnent experimentally planted five acn as of Douglas fir, with a protective 3 r i n g of insignis (radiata), at what is now the Kaingaroa base eanvp. !At iout 1906 tho Waiotapu prison camp un dertook the care of this and other X aingaroa plots. In March of last y jar (1932) the Douglas firs averaged I a height of 81 feet and a diameter of '! 0i inches (maximum 19 inches); t he quicker-growing' protective ring fof insignis averaged a height of ' 128 ft (ranging from 100 f- to 144 ft) and a diameter of 2.lft. (diameter. breast high). For thirty years growth i the figures speak for themselves.

A WONDERFUL SUCCESS.

At the outset it was not known whether the bleak Kaingaroa would grow trees; it -was taken for .granted that nothing else would grow. The trees have now been proved to be a wonderful success. Their influence and shelter have modified the weather effects, and, there are now good vegetable gardens and grass paddocks, the latter not free from "bush sickness." Smaller native birds like the fantail and the grey warbler seem to have made their permanent homes in the exotic trees. Where there are eucalypts . the tui is sometimes seen, but the makoImako (bell bird) is not reported at present. Introduced birds also are found among the pines. ,On the flat areas where the unbroken forest of pines has stamped out the fern there does not seem to be much living for the, wild pig, but where the plantation falls more or less steeply towards the Eangitaiki, and where there are unplantable Tavines and steep faces carrying indigenous growth, also where fire-breaks are, the pig may continue to find a living. Possibly the deer population has increased since the forest came, .and the wild horses that roamed1 the treeless plains have adapted themselves to the new order of things; both are in a position to increase, subject to control by man. Other subjects of .control are rabbits and hares, which

have the trees and scrub for shelter and the roads and breaks and open places for pasture.

SCARCITY OF WATER;

Both horses and deer make their own tracks through the plantation, and the former generally lead to -water, which is a matter of importance on the thirsty Kaingaroa uplands. This scarcity of water is one of the great factors against farming the drier uplands, and in favour of trees.

Early in March the berries on the tutu along the roads and breaks and open places were ripening, and the little green "white-eyes" were busy in them. Chaffinches, other finches, starlings, and sparrows were in evidence, also the now rare banded dottrel (charadrius bicinctus) and—still more interesting—its young. It seems that the Kaingaroa Plains are a nesting place for the dottrel, which migrates seasonally between coast and hinterland. The dottrel, is a ground-nester. And, alas, as one traverses the roads the long-tailed stoat is occasionally seen darting across from one • side -to the other. So is it a ease of doom for the dottrel? This native bird; according to Oliver, is an insect-eater and "entirely useful."

" To graft trees of Europe and America on to hundreds of square miles of treeless New Zealand is a great physical achievement, and even, a hater of exotic growths, and even the most confirmed doubter of the future economic value of exotic timbers, must bo impressed by what has been done on the Kaingaroas. Particularly will he bo impressed if he travelled the lone straight road across the Kaingaroas from Waiotapu to Murupara when nothing grew there save scrub and tussock at the beginning of this century. There is a companionship in trees. They have made the plateau a different country.