“BURNING OFF”

Grey River Argus, 20 May 1938, Page 10

“BURNING OFF”

SCANDALOUS WASTE OF TIMBER. It is no exaggeration to describe as criminal the practice which still continues of felling and burning indigenous forest in order to replace it with grass. It is a crime against the country; the landowner or the lessee of Crown land or Native land who deliberately sets fire to bush simply to clear the land is not only guilty of J ‘destroying valuable property but is committing a grave anti-social offence! ('There may be no law to prevent it: jit is none the less a crime against the! wellbeing of a land which is already| I in great need of the timber and is is far too sparsely forested. | It seems extraordinary after all; that has been spoken and written! .about the folly of the crude “burning-' off” methods, that the ignorant andi uneconomic practice is still carried on in some places, as if the native' bush were iust a cumbering of the 1 ground. The occurrence reported from Dargaville in the middle of January appears to call for action by the Government. In spite of warning by the Forest Service, a block of some sev-l enty acres of felled bush adjoining the| southern side of the Waipoua Kauri| Forest was set fire to, with the re-1 suit that twenty men under the of-i fleer in charge of the State Forest! spent two strenuous days fighting the; flames and preventing the fire from crossing the boundary. It was stated that the owner of the felled timber had been refused permission to light'

anj’ bush within an area contiguous to Waipoua, because of tne dry weather and the consequent danger to the 1 kauri forest. All settlers there, in I fact, had been warned mt to set the j bush on fire. Yet someove did, with I very grave danger to thi national ■ forest. I Apart from the obvious risk of dam--3 age to the Waipoua State Forest - - ■| which should long ago have been pro- ■| claimed a national sanctuary—there <s the injury to the country’s indigen- ■> ous timber resources involved in this tj bad old habit of chop-saw-and-hurn • If the felled timber were milled and >1 turned to account in that way, there ’! would be some sense in it. some jus- > tification for the felling. But simply ’! to destroy everything, to make a , clean sweep of the bush with fire, is I simply wicked waste. I It does not matter whether it is privately owned or not. No landowni er or occupier can be allowed to bo ■ a law unto himself. There is some ■ antiquated legislative provision about giving notice to neighbours before | burning off. That is absurdly inade- ; quate and out of date now. Notice or ! no notice, felling timber simply to re- , duce it to ashes is a relic of the bad old past settlement of New Zealand. There is a vast amount of tree waste in the ordinary operations of the saw1 millers. There is an infinitely more I deplorable spectacle when n tract of bush is given over to fire-raisers. "A good burn-off” —too familiar phrase - I stands for a disgraceful squandering iof the country’s natural wealth. — “Forest and Bird.” '