SOIL EROSION

Northern Advocate, 10 September 1937, Page 4

SOIL EROSION

Tl l e-Minister for Internal Affairs has been impressing upon local bodies in Various parts of the Dominion the menace* of soil ero--1 si on. He has urged reafforestation of high country and made a strong appeal for methods to stay the disintegration of watersheds. This is a matter of. which NorthI'anders should never lose sight. We hope that the efforts of schoolchildren to supply trees for planting in Northland will be heartily supported. If evidence is needed to prove the menace of soil erosion it is provided in an article printed in a recent issue of “The Times.” It is pointed out that ever since the dawn of ! cultivation and stock-raising, ero- ! sion has been one of mankind’s most relentless foes. Both in Northern Africa and in China, great civilisations have disappeared before the onslaught, and vast areas once rich in grain and pasture have given place to barren deserts. Today, the menace of soil erosion is almost worldwide. The rapid growth of desert in Africa, particularly in Northern Nigeria and the region lying between Kenya and the Cape, was recently described by Mrs Huxley in two vivid articles published in “The Times.’ Sir | Daniel Hall has further called attention to the feat that the land hunger, which is at the root of native unrest. in Africa, is due almost entirely to soil erosion in the native reservations, in the Wakamba reserve alone, .according to Sir Daniel’s testimony, several

hundreds of square miles, now hard sun-caked wastes, were fertile grazing ground within the memory of the tribal chiefs. Perhaps the most dramatic of all. however, is the havoc at present being wrought by soil erosion in the United States, where no less than 100,000,000 acres of once fertile agricultural land have lost the bulk of their top-soil and have been condemned as unfit for further cultivation by the recentlyappointed National Resources Committee. Already the vicious cycle of floods and dust-storms, which is every yeacr taking an ever-increasing toll of the great central plains, has driven 80,000 men, women, and children from their homee and left them des-j titute.