EROSIONS IMPRESS A VISITOR

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 122, 19 November 1938, Page 8

EROSIONS IMPRESS A VISITOR

Those New Zealanders who have

for many years protested against the evils of deforestation—and who sometimes have been termed cranks by their opponents —-will be glad of the powerful help of Professor Skottsberg. The Professor's evidence concerning the deforestation evils that are being courted in New Zealand, and avoided in Sweden, cannot be dismissed by allegation? of personal crankiness, or of prejudice, for a visitor cannot be accused of local prejudices, and in this case his authority is admitted. Yesterday's issue, which contained Professor Skottsberg's aerial impres-

sions of well-defined eroded areas in various mountain and valley systems of both islands—erosions extending and tending to meet in one common devastation —also contained a report of Mr. Semple's Hawke's Bay tour and of the proposal to create a special department or. section to deal with erosion. In the Hawke's Bay earthquake region, the Minister is face to face with the effects of a seismological shaking plus deforestation; but on his Wellington-New Plymouth air journey Professor Skottsberg would see areas where the erosion is an almost pure, product of destruction of the forest. Man cannot control earthquakes, but he can control operations affecting the health and permanence of the native forest. The indigenous plant covering of New Zealand, and the earthquakes, may both be called, in widely differing senses, acts of God. No human hand could create the forest as the *,vhite man inherited it. Even as it is today, no human hand could replace it. But it is within the power of man to preserve it. And that is the very least that he should do.