FOREST VALUES

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 64, 13 September 1939, Page 7

FOREST VALUES

AND TIMBER NEEDS

COMMON PLAN WANTED

IS IT ATTAINABLE?

(By X.Y.Z.)

One of the practical questions confronting forest conservationists is to what extent a forest is. altered by the removal of selected trees for commercial use or for the welfare of the forest itself.

Can the commercially valuable trees, and the over-mature trees, be removed from a native forest in such a way that the forest retains its value as a regulator of the run-off of water and as a preventer of erosion?

Does average sawmilling practice conform to the requirement stated in the last paragraph—that is, preservation of the forest's valuje as regulator of run-off, etc? If not, is it possible that sawmilling practice can be made to conform to that requirement, and yet remain commercially profitable?

If an affirmative answer to the last question could be found, a bridge would be built on which the Forest Service, and conservationist critics of the Forest Service, could unite their forces. For a commercial utilisation of selected trees —a utilisation, that would preserve the forest, rejuvenate it, retain its water-flow regulative values, and not increase its fire risks —would be a utilisation no longer vulnerable to the arrows which critics of Forest Service management have found most effective.

The possibility that commercial utilisation, by selection of trees and by technical measures for removing them without damage to the rest of the forest, can be consistent with retention of the forest's other natural values, has yet to be demonstrated. The question therefore arises whether experiments could be made to prove, or whether data could be gathered to prove, that a forest through which a discriminating sawmiller has operated has still its former values, particularly in rain-reception and in regulating run-off.

The answer cannot be assumed to be in the affirmative without question, for there are those who argue that large trees and small—in fact, all the tiers in the forest structure from groundgrowth to top of tallest tree—are necessary to a forest's function and are cogs in the wheel of its daily life. Is this true, or to what extent is it true? If it is true at all, how far do its implications carry when we are considering whether protection forests (conservation forests) should be selectively logged or sawmilled?

Another question arises: If, it is found that conservation, and a discriminating utilisation of the forest, are not necessarily inconsistent, has New Zealand the necessary technical skill, both in private and in official channels, to give the principle practical effect? Is New Zealand technically capable of setting aside a suitable forest, and of demonstrating that commercial timber requirements and conservationist principles can walk hand in hand? Is there sufficient competence on the sylvicultural side and on the commercial utilisation side to enable something i practical to be done, to replace everlasting argument?

Such a demonstration would seem to be the most promising route by which the various forces (commercial and uncommercial) interested in the native forest might come together.