THE FORESTRY SERVICE.

Evening Star, Issue 18032, 28 July 1922, Page 4

THE FORESTRY SERVICE.

Axi-; and fire have caused; .incalculable damage to the forest resources of New Zealand. Now that a Forestry Department has been established which has conservation and renewal, in place of destruction, for its watchword, it would be a crowning tragedy if the axe of economy were allowed to mutilate that new growth. The two years’ record of tho Forestry Department has been set forth recently in an address which was given by its Director, Captain Ellis, last week an Wellington, and in. a' pamphlet that has been issued by Sir James Wilson, chairman of Die New Zealand Forestry League, formed for popular support of its activities. It is a good record, which should convince both . politicians and the public that economy at the expense of this department’s work must be unthinkable, because it would be too costly. It has been stated that if a scientific policy of conservation had been adopted from the first, the revenue from New Zealand’s kauri forests alone would have gone a long way towards meeting the interest on our present Debt. Preservation of forests

means tho preservation of wealth, as well as of climate, water power resources, and fertility; and a department which gives heed to these concerns stands to save infinitely more thah it can spend. If its work meant no more than making New Zealand practically independent, as it should bo, of other countries for its timber supplies, that saving alone would be one of the greatest. During recent years, Captain Ellis pointed out, thousands of timber users have been paying nearly as much in freight alone as they paid for the delivered article a generation ago. It is gratifying to learn that more lias been done since the Forestry Department was set up a couple of years ago for the perpetuation of our forest resources and to make them increasingly productive than was effected previously during a long period of- years. To date, there have been dedicated to forestry and timber crop production over seven million acres of land. Protection of the national forests from fire has been so well provided for that last year the loss on this account was only one-tenth of tho previous average. Three thousand four hundred acres of trees were planted by the State last year, as against a previous planting of 1,380 acres, and four million trees were planted by private individuals, as against thousands before. Milling is no longer conducted ou the old lines, which left thousands of tons of 'timber to go to rot each year. Tho timber revenue last year was the best since 1912, and promises next year to break' the record. An exhaustive investigation is being made now' to show how various timbers can best bo utilised. The department which promises so much advantage is not old enough to need pruning for its own part. It has been one of the cheapest of insurances. Its net expenditure for administration during the first year, after allowing for returns from the sale of trees and from rents and royalties, was about £7,000, more than half of which is described as non-recurring. Tho net expenditure this year will be larger, as tho full staff was not at once appointed, but at most it will not bo more than £IO,OOO. Even that makes a cheap insurance of assets to the value of fifty millions sterling, represented by the remaining State forests, and it is claimed that, as sales and royalties increase, the accounts will soon show a credit instead of a debit, and in tho future will materially aid the Consolidated Fund.

Past attempts to put the work of forestry on a systematic basis form a sorry history. The economy passion makes a danger now which must be resisted. “ Forestry, Captain Ellis points out, “is just in its childhood. It has yet to weather the storm and period of childish diseases. The forestry train, figuratively, after having been derailed six times by retrenchment, and looted by public indifference, is now approaching its seventh danger-spot —a< ‘sink-hole’ under the rails. wAVill it stay on the track and get to its objective safely? ” It will, if there is any appreciation on this country’s part of the difference between true and false economy.