SNOW DAMAGE

Evening Post, Volume CXVIII, Issue 34, 9 August 1934, Page 14

SNOW DAMAGE

IN LOCAL FOREST

WINTER UNUSUALLY SEVERE

FALLEN VEGETATION

The excessive snowfall of the present winter is demonstrated by the amount of damage done in the native bush in tho Ilutt basin and in tho Orongorongo Valley. The forest floor is littered with branches (and in some cases fallen trees) to an extent not seen for many winters past. The heavy snowfall early in July is tho main cause of this damage. Trees and vegetation becamo overweighted with snow, and a high wind, following, was the last straw.

The amount of litter lying about is not only great as compared with, past winters in Wellington. It Is great in comparison with equally heavy snowfalls in the forests of other districts. The snow in the Soutli^ Island forests weights the trees and tranches and brings them down, but visitors say that they have not seen in districts of heavy snowfall the proportion of damage now on view in the Hutt basin. Perhaps the reason is that the local vegetation, ustd in general to mild winters, was not prepared for the heavy attack in July.

The extent of the smash and downfall in the forests of the ■ .Wellington Water Board, and particularly in the Akiitarawa-Whakatiki section thereof, has been noted by the board's chief forestry officer, Mr. A. N. Perham, by Dr. 11. 11. Allan, the- well-known botanist, and by Messrs. Thompson and Simpson, of Otago, who visited Wellington to attend the funeral of the late Dr. Cockayne. A consensus of their evidence is that the proportion of damage is altogether out of the common.

All the same, Mr. Perham points out that regeneration is very rapid in the gullies of comparatively low altitude where the smash is most noticeable. In some gullies the predominant growth is of plants and small trees, surrounded with ridges and spurs on which bigger trees grow. Big branches of the bigger trees have crashed down, and a good deal of the smaller vegetation is almost flattened out, but the latter is of types that grow rapidly, and which indeed .appear by a process of evolution to bo supplanting the bigger timber tree's, such as totara, rimu, miro, kahikatea, and matai. While the recuperative power of the smaller vegetation is abundant, it yet may be that the occurrence of a dry summer following this wet, cold winter would, create temporarily in the bush a fire risk, because heat and -drought would bring . the "slash", and downthrown matter to a tindery condition before tho shoots of young growth could permeate it and damp it. An immediate disadvantage to people whose business it is to be in tho bush (such as opossum trappers) is the difficulty that now exists in moving through a forest whero the ordinary obstacles to locomotion are added to by what the snow has brought down. Whether the beech forests on the higher spurs have suffered as much as the gullies is.not yet clear. The'whole position of the beech forest differs from that of tho conifers —totara, rimu, miro, kahikatea, and matai. It was the opinion of tho late Dr. Cockayne that beech forests offer good prospects of regeneration, because the beech seedlings can hold their own with competitive growth. But in the rain forest the growth of rival 'plants is considered by many' observers to be generally superior to tho growth of young rimus, matais, totaras, etc.; and the Litter's inability to tolerate shade handicaps them in tho slow evolution now in progress.

In short, snow damage in tho forest will be repaired in a year or two by tnc plants that are fittest to repair it, but it is unpleasantly noticeable. Commercially, the fittest may not be tho best.