WAIKAREMOANA ATTACKED

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 138, 14 June 1933, Page 5

WAIKAREMOANA ATTACKED

r (To the Editor.) Sir,—New Zealand has made many efforts in the face, of the white man's increasing encroachment to protect and reserve parts of her fast disappearing native bush. Jn spite of many letters on the subject, and of, I believe, much extermination in the past, does anyone realise that the imported animals, such as goats, opossum, and; last but not least, deer, arc.coon to destroy 'even,''bur reserves? It is estimated that there are some 15,000 deer in,the Hawke's Bay Province and some 6000 in the Waikaremoapa Reserve alone. In Westland and Otago* I suppose they are in even greater * proportion. v One, of New Zealand's most prominent sportenien, Mr. .E. J. Herrick, of Hawke's Bay, states that deer have so much increased in New Zealand; that they have deteriorated rapidly; consequently the sportsman does not consider it much worth while to stalk such poor heads. Mr. Herrick goes on to say that he thinks the introduction of deer ( to New Zealand will prove the death-1 knell,'to New.Zealand forests. He deeply | deplores'the.fact. He has looked out on a glorious expanse of bush some ten miles up.from the bend of Dusky Sound. On entering that bush he has" found vast tracts of it stripped clear and bare—not a vestige of undergrowth left, and the rest of the bush all trampled and spoilt. The same, he says, applies to Westland and Central Otago. Up here in Hawke'e Bay, aprovince of open plains and-hills, and less thick: bush,' one of our few' glorious spots, Waikaremoana,; once dense .forest,: is now fast -being, stripped),in likeji.man-. ner. :<■'.' •""'.-: ' -.'v y.p: .■/■.'; "■■■>, Another Hawke's Bay sportsman cays that the only Jiope of saving the luxuriant bufih round one of pur most beautiful lakes of New Zealand is to destroy the deer by poison. .That, he says, would be a, comparatively easy proposition. The deer trample through the forest to the lake s edge to drink. Feed them'white carrots, he says, for about a week,, along that edge—get them accustomed to feeding there, and then poison-the next feed. It sounds drastic,:but drastic diseases need drastic cures. ' Anything, surely anything . at all to save our dying forests^-our forests unique in their-botanical interest and. in their beauty —to say nothing 'of their inestimable economic, value to New. Zealand, one of the world's virgin beauty spots. _ Not many of us know that,-as JJr. Cockayne, says, "This-forest is a unique production of Nature, found in _no other land," and that "It is to countries like ours that 'science looks for such speoal studies as will bring about that advance in knowledge, that will shed light upon, the methods by which Nature planted the great garden of > the 'world. To quote Laing and Blackwell: "New Zealand hitf developed many and animals unknown in,, any other part of the world. Indeed, three-fourths of the mdieenous species of flowering plants are not to be met with elsewhere.". Soon these will be destroyed-and that, m our STi^l?ta7eStedthatthere = stiH twenty millions of acres of bushclad country.. In 1907 it was stated that that acreage/was being reduced .annu ally by not less than from 100,000 to 200,000 acres. That was for progress. Have we, like Esau, sold our birthright, the worlds birthrieht, for a mess of pottage? .The Hon W P. Reeves has said: A^ bitter price to pay is this for progress. _ But are we just to write of such things in aur papers, read it by the .fireside, deplore it deeply, and do nothing?—l am, C L"gABRIELLE PRESTON-THOMAS. Hastings, June 8.