TIMBER SUPPLY

Evening Post, Volume CXVIII, Issue 8, 10 July 1934, Page 3

TIMBER SUPPLY

ECONOMIC NATIONALISM

Before the Wellington section of the Kconbniie Society of Australia and New Zealand last evening, Mr. A. U. Kntriean, engineer in forest products to the Kew Zealand State Forest Service, initiated a discussion on "Econo"mic Nationalism in Timber." The speaker propounded tho view that as forestry derived its greatest national significance, from the maintenance of climatic, soil, and water equilibria due to their far-reaching effects upon agriculture, the incidental production of timber transcended tho usual implications of economic nationalism. To the extent, however, that the forest policy involved the creation of a suiaplementary exotic forest resource to bridge tho gap in timber supplies which otherwise would occur between the exhaustion : of the virgin forests and their conversion into healthy-growing, stands -of the indi■gerious species, the subject, fell within i the scope of economic nationalism. Beccnt and current changes in local population and per capita consumption of. timber were analysed, the world supply and demand situation examined, and the necessity for supplying the bulk of the Dominion's requirements from; its own forests adequately demonstrated. The maintenance of a small export and import trade was justified by the world-wide demand for woods of peculiar properties and uses. Different woods had different properties and different uses, and no country possessed a sufficient variety of species, to meet, the whole of. its requirements, and it was for this reason that the number of woods figuring in the international timber trade was increasing every year, said Mr. Entrican.