FOREST DENUDATION

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVI, Issue 308, 27 November 1936, Page 12

FOREST DENUDATION

NORTH ISLAND AREAS. CALL FOR REGENERATION. I “A most pressing and urgent call for a halt and a right-about turn on the march of forest destruction comes from the King Country, and in fact, all the high country along the Main Trunk Line between the Waipa Valley and the headwaters of the Wanganui,” states the official organ of the Forest and Bird Protection Society of, New Zealand. “Ever-increasing raids are j being made by sawmillers on forest that should never be touched under the methods of felling and waste that prevail at present. So, too, with the highlands between Taumarunui and . Lake Taupo. “Some day a sane and intelligentsystem of forestry will be evolved which will use and cultivate and rei generate the native timbers everyj where, instead of sweeping them away. I At present, all is destruction without ! rgeneration. .. . The country is simply living on its forest capital; this is disappearing like the water that vanishes down a bare hillside, and there is nothing to show for it but plantations of exotic pines; more often nothing but a devastated landscape given over to scrub and weeds. NO REPLACEMENT POLICY. “The heart of the King Country, in and about the Rangitoto Ranges, broken country, that should never have been stripped of forest, has been partly denuded of the greater part of its valuable forests, and the work of removal without replacement goes on. Are we to take it that for the last_ quarter of a century the Forest Service has been quite indifferent to the evil consequences of this forest destruction in a territory that will never grow anything so well as it grows the native timbers? It certainly would appear that the service either does not realise the damage that has been done or is quite willing to see the native forest disappar in order that it may do a bit of exotic tree-planting; this in spite of the notoriously poor value of such trees for timber purposes as compared with the indigenous woods. “Settlers have felled and burned bush there on thousands of acres that have since reverted to scrub and fern with the added curse of ragwort. The sweeping away embraces all classes of land. No effort has been made to hold for the State land that it should never have been parted with. Compensations to private owners would be a trifle by comparison with the enormous national value of the standing bush. THREAT TO RIVERS. “This heart of the North Island, embracing the country from the Waipa and Mokau to Lake Taupo and down to the headwaters of the Wanganui, is a key watershed. Many rivers take their rise there; the forest is necessary to maintain their flow and to prevent the flooding that has caused destruction in so many other parts of the island. They are being ruined by the stripping away of their covering; water supply and bush exist together. When the natural protection of the streams and the soil is so ignorantly removed the land is laid open to the ruin that surely will become complete as the years go on.

“Climate, the banks of rivers, the water supply of towns, all will suffer. The lamentable effects of plant destruction, so pronounced in the Wanganui Valley, the Manawatu, the Wairarapa, and the Hutt Valley are seemingly ignored. They have ,been ignored for half a century and more. Now surely the time has come to shake up the dry bones of State neglect I

“How can these King Country forests be secured against further destruction? That is a matter for the earnest consideration of our new Government, whose members, we are sure, do not wish to see the country exhaust not only its forest capital, but its very life. It must be emphasised that we are living on our capital by allowing these forests to be swept away for the benefit of sawmilling interests and a trifle of royalties for the State. Once gone, and the land impoverished, what can replace them? Certainly not those exotics; their value is discredited in other countries, and they can never he so suitable for New Zealand cultivation as the vegetation native to the soil.”