NATURE—AND MAN

Grey River Argus, 7 August 1937, Page 10

NATURE—AND MAN

THE CALL FOR SOIL-SAVING. ALARM IN U. S. A. (Edited by Leo Fanning). Stuart Chase, author of a remarkable book, “Rich Lands, Poor Lands/’ is making Americans fear the devil of erosion. In a recent article in “The American Magazine,” he remarked that more than 300 million acres (nearly five times the whole area of New Zealand) of good farm land in the United States of America had been completely devastated or seriously damaged by water erosion. Out in the "Dust Bowl” wind erosion had brought another 100 million acres close to ruin. “We needed land cleared for crops —did we not?—lumber to build our houses: grass on which to feed our cattle; fish and game to eat? We did.” he continues, but was it necessary to level the forest, plough the plains, destroy the grass, kill the game, befoul the waters, so mercilessly? No. The rate of destruction has been all out of proportion to the benefits derived. “How long will Nature stand the drain? We have the answer in these 300,000,000 acres of ruined land, in the 3,000,000,000 tons of topsoil sliding to the ocean every year, in the cumulative horror of dust storms in the enlarging toll of drought, in the underground water-table which drops and drops, in the serious increase in insect pests, in the 10,000,000 Americans now living on land too exhausted to provide a living, and in the mounting ferocity of flood.

“Our continent can endure it no longer. If America is to continue to be our homeland, we must turn from our riotous heedless ways, and come to terms with Nature." NEW ATTITUDE OF TIMBER INDUSTRY IN U.S.A. Leaders in the timber industry of the U.S.A, have begun to see the disastrous folly of the old wasteful methods which may still be seen in some parts of New Zealand. The new outlook of big “lumber kings” was mentioned by W. B. Greely in a recent address at the Forest Conservation Conference in Washington: “The viewpoint of forest industry toward conservation has materially changed during the past twenty years,” he said. “It is to-day in transition from the old order to the new. It is gradually changing its methods and its thinking from the old viewpoint of timber as a mine to the newer viewpoint of timber as a crop. Forest industry seeks to adjust its upgringing in liassez faire economics to the public interest now reorganised as inherent in natural resources. It honestly wants to find common ground on which the obligations of responsible men to the investments in their trust can meet legitimate interests of public welfare. “This viewpoint represents a growing effort to adapt the practices of the industry to the reasonable requirements of public welfare.

“The definite trend in forest industry to-day, as an obligation of good citizenship, is to leave its cut-Sver

lands in good condition for regrowth. Beyond that, the industry knows that the management of forest lands for planned future production, or sustained yield, is coming; that the old regime of ‘cut-out and liquidate’ will give place to permanency in forest ownership, in forest-borne communities, in forest-supported labour. A number of owners have already put their forest properties in continuous production, and are doing their best to carry out the whole programme. The industry generally wants to progress in the same direction.” MOUNTAINS MAKE FOR FRIENDSHIP. The philosophy of mountaineering, which is heartily enjoyed by many nature-lovers in New Zealand, is the subject of a pleasant article by Joseph Bosetti in “Trail and Timberline." “The writer of these lines,” he says, “has travelled far and wide; he has had his share of the famous climbs in Europe and America. Yet in all earnestness he wishes to state that never in his wanderings has he found a sad or worried mountaineer. “Everywhere on the heights he met cheerfulness, joviality, health, and youth even in elderly men. Above 10,000 feet everybody becomes your friend. Any difference of culture or class is obliterated as by enchantment and you seem all of a sudden to have much more in common with the last unknown straggler who blows into the hut, besides the one spoon to stir the coffee, the same bottle for your kirsch and the same straw mattress for the night. And you laugh off together and so pleasantly the discomforts of the trip, and of life in general, and together you welcome the complete relief from the hypocrisy of conventionalities and ‘ennui’, of hypersophisticated civilization. Do you think it is very wrong to suggest mountain climbing as a panacea for the worlds’ troubles?”

A CLEVER NEST BUILDER. On a far-away spec of the Dominion of New Zealand—Meyer Island in the Kermadec Group—Mr H. Guth-rie-Smith saw the clever nest-build-ing of the white-capped noddy, described in “Sorrows and Joys of a New Zealand Naturalist.” "On Ngaio trees projecting from a steep section of dusty hill-side the nests were built. These strange structures seemed plastered rather than balanced, on more or less horizontal branches, mostly on naked branches, indeed the normal choice was a round, perfectly smooth, twigless, mossiess, lichenless bough, with a girth of less than a man’s upper arm. Forked sites though in use, did not particularly seem to be sought after. The plastered appearance of the fully used nests may well have been the result of guano trampled into the nest material, finally glueing it on to the bark. What a miracle, however, must have been the creation of a new nest, the fresh construction of one of these spilliken heqps where only the most delicate manipulation, the utmost precision of balance could have been the arrangement of bits of dry stick, thin slippery grass blades and crinkled leaves, stirred by each breath of air, poised one by one on a smooth, bare, round bough.”