SAVE BUSH AND SAVE SOIL

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 69, 23 March 1938, Page 10

SAVE BUSH AND SAVE SOIL

It is not so very many years ago that most of the interior of the North Island was covered witti virgin forest. Today there are only a few scattered patches here and there, apart from mountain ranges, where the bush has survived the progress of settlement with the axe, the saw, and the firebrand. These patches, from a variety of reasons, by no means all aesthetic, have been preserved from destruction. Consequently, the announcement in "The Post" on Saturday of great concern in Wanganui over the fact that millers arc negotiating for rights lo mill in 1800 acres of virgin bush in the Waitotara County will awaken a kindred feeling among all who have the future of New Zealand at heart. It is stated that the bush is growing in rough, useless country — like so much of the King Country despoiled by past generations —and that, if the trees go, the streams which furnish Wanganui's water supply will be affected. There is also the further general danger, after the destruction of the bush, of far-reaching soil erosion which has followed the denudation of forest lands so widely elsewhere in New Zealand. It was this aspect which prompted a strong denunciation of the Waitotara proposal in a letter, signed- "Anti-despoilers," in yesterday's "Post." As the correspondent points out, the damage done by the destruction of the bush in the higher country, where rivers take their rise, can hardly be repaired, even at the greatest expense, by river protection works on the lower lands. The argument against any further destruction in such localities and _in favour of extensive reafforestation seems obvious and unanswerable.