RESERVATION OF FOREST AREAS

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume XLII, Issue XLII, 29 December 1923, Page 9

RESERVATION OF FOREST AREAS

Writing, on the above subject, '•'New Zealander" says in an exchange: The Hon. .J. G. Coates sets a timely warning in respect to the forest lands of the Urewera. In the past inexperience might be a valid excuse for the harm that has been done in certain areas. The Wanganui watershed has been depleted of forest out of all reason and economy. It is not a mere belt a mile or two wide, of forest, along a river's course which will preserve that stream. The vital source of a. river is its springs, depending on the even distribution of soakage. All this, however, is quite well known, but nevertheless it will take careful jurisdiction to preserve any land in natural forest in face of a kind of fanaticism man has for destroying all before him. As we how have a Forestry Department and a society for the preservation of our native birds, we might hope, with some confidence, that the depredations of nature in the future will not be as wanton and wholesale as those in the past. At all events, any depredation cannot excel that which has been allowed to t^ake place in other parts, even under our very noses, as witness the Waitakere Ranges.

This recalls that some years ago ; while on the North Auckland Parliamentary tour, the writer was shocked at the prodigal waste shown in bush ; that should have been severely pre- ' served. Mentioning this to a leading j Parliamentarian, the latter replied with ! what appeared criminal carelessness: '■"Oh, but there are plenty more!" At ' the rate they were then going the 1 forests available would be gone in a very short time. And one sees cases nearly every time one travels of similar i waste. Bit's of lovely native bush that ! are" in locations which never can by | any stretch of the imagination be con- ! sidered good for farming, may be seen with the fire through gone irretrieva|j}y__no gain to the present and a «erioi's loss to future generations. It was indeed full time that a halt was called.