The Northern Advocate Dally MONDAY, OCTOBER 28, 1935. FROM SOIL TO DUST

Northern Advocate, 28 October 1935, Page 4

The Northern Advocate Dally

MONDAY, OCTOBER 28, 1935. FROM SOIL TO DUST

Registered for transmission through the post as a Newspaper.

During recent weeks, our cable columns have contained many references to Libya and to the despatch of Italian troops to its Egyptian.. frontier, It is not long, however, since attention whs focussed upon Libya for a different reason—the way in which desert has supplanted fertile country. In this respect the disaster which has overtaken Libya is ah object lesson to New Zealand, where the violation of Nature, by denuding the high lands of bush and veget/ation. has already brought loss and havoc to many districts. Mr Kcamedy Shaw recently contributed to “The Times” a series cf articles on “Dead Libya,” where he shows that what is now desert! was once fertile country, carry-] ing a numerous and higlily civil-j ised population. This is in keep-)

ing with what every traveller in Asia and Northern Africa has become acquainted; he has seen the remains of what were evidently , once great cities, requiring vast supplies of food, situated in districts that are now incapable of feeding more than a few sheep or goats. Mr Shaw says it was thdught at one time that desiccation was the result of climatic :changes, but there is little to support. this view. Some of the deserted cities—Timgad in North Africa for example, and the sister city Lambese—were busy and populous centres in Roman days, and there is no evidence of any catastrophic change of climate since that time. The theory is now generally abandoned for the convincing reason that the process can be seen going on today as the plain result of man’s own ignorance and lack of foresight in his treatment of the soil by which he lives. In America this rake’s progress is particularly rapid, but it is not peculiar to America. Soil erosion is practically unknown in Northern Europe/ where soils are almost, continuously damp,, and torrential downpours and. scorching winds are rare experiences. In South Africa, in parts of Australia and Canada, and in many other countries with seasonal rainfall it is a very serious menace. Owing to faulty land management valuable agricultural land in French and British Nigeria and in the French Sudan is being conquered arid absorbed by the Sahara Desert at a rate estimated to exceed a kilometre a year. “The Times” comment on these statements should appeal to New Zealanders, and particularly the people of the North. It point's out that what happens is that man, in exploiting the soil, deprives it of its protective covering, clearing, away trees, burning off, over-grazing the herbage, or exhausting the humus by .constant cropping without replen- , ishment. During the dry season the ground surface becomes pow 7 dered, and is swept away by the wind, as occurred with disastrous results over a great area of the United. States in the spring of this year. The soil is reduced to a poor physical condition, unable to retain moisture; and, when the rains come, especially if they are at all.heavy, it is either washed away entirely or loses its valuable soluble salts. Dr. 0. E. Baker, a leading American authority on economic geography, has estimated that since America was settled an area has been denuded . of its surface soil equal to the total area of cultivated land in Germany. The danger for a long time was disregarded. When one part of the country lost its fertility, settlers moved farther West, and in any ease the land was regarded as the settler’s own property, to use or misuse, or even to destroy, as he pleased. Recently the rate of devastation has become accelerated to such a pace that Governments have been forced into action. Last year, for example, to protect the Middle West, President Roosevelt, began the planting of a great belt of trees 1000 miles long and 100 miles broad, stretching from Texas to the Canadian frontier. Preservation of the soil over'a great area which was being rapidly devastated is one of the main objects of the Tennessee Valley enterprise. The losses already suffered are irreparable; but energetic statesmanship, backed by an awakened public opinion, could certainly cheek the pace at which the ultimate basis of American prosperity is being destroyed. In the experience of Libya, now a great area of arid desert; in the experience of America, where an authority declares that the United States has “Ibss than 100 years of virile national existence” left to it unless there is a drastic change in the way in which the soil is treated; and in the experience of other parts of the world where man’s cupidity as well as Ids stupidity has brought a harvest of ruin, New Zealand should take warning. Floods in Northland, and elsewhere, constitute a danger signal which must not be neglected.