NATIVE FOREST IN DANGER

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXVI, 19 December 1935, Page 6

NATIVE FOREST IN DANGER

EFFORT TO SAVE THE RUSH AT TOTARANUI SUPPORTED BY LOCAL RESIDENTS Information has reached us that the residents of Takaka are fully alive to the effort being made to save their famous beauty-spot from destruction. Everybody ig most enthusiastic and eager to hear what effect the representations made to the Government are having. Letters continue to arrive from residents anxious to show their opinion as to the desirability of saving Totaranui bush, one of the few classic examples of our native forest still left.

It i s interesting to see the different arguments they put forward as to why the attempt must not be allowed to fail. The following are some of them: — (a) Totaranui is the kind of thing that is of interest to visitors from overseas who are not of a spectacular type but whose words carry great weight abroad. This is the best kind of publicity any country can get. (b) When the bush is felled will the land be of any use afterwards? A lot of people now have seen land cleared of its foiest and of no use for anything else ever afterwards. The world is now faced with the depletion of its timber resources and more attention i s being paid to their conservation. Experts are agreed that a very serious shortage of ..timber and wood products mav come about in the near future if great care is not exercised. This puts scientific forestry at a premium and what could be better for - study-purposes than , this Totaranui bush with its unique variety! (c) The motor-car, aeroplane and improved shipping facilities make it easy for North'lslanders to come here now-a-days. The Provinces of Wellington and Taranaki with their cities and numerous large towns have no forest reserves such as the kauri forests of Auckland. Now is their chance for a unique and beautiful oiie, reasonably get-at-able. This argument will have greater force in the near future, for if the mineral resources of the Takaka-Collingwood area are developed there will he a great increase of population in that region. (dT At present Nelson Province- is much better off than the North Island for native bush The latter is very disheartening in this respect. Where twenty, years ago fine forests ornamented Taihape there is now practically none. Wliat there is in other parts is being ruined by deer. People do not realise that the present of ungulat.e animals means the passing'of the forests.' It looks, therefore, as if the saving of Totaranui is very Urgent indeed for it must be one of the few classic examples of our native forest still left.

(e) The continued destruction of our forest and forest-life is a most vivid and disquietening instance of lack of vision to make lis live as a people. Educationalists and other authorities are agreed that human beings do not reach, the heights by mere; absorption of instruction and precept. There must be inspiration and stimulus from the environment, as “the child’s mind i s not a vessel, to be filled but a torch to be kindled.” New Zealand must retain that vision without which the people perish. Surely there is nothing . grander and jnore calculated to inspire than the finest example of Nature’s temples : God’s gift to man which He gives but once.

“DUTY TO OURSELVES AND POSTERITY”

i (To the Editor) Sir, —Mrs Moncrieff and the Bush Protection Society are to be congratulated on their efforts to save, the Totaranui bush. It is one of the .few remaining ' places where good luxuriant bush may still be seen. There is plenty of beech forest on the hills but of the old valley rj forest of white pine, rimu, matai, totara ‘etc., there is hardly a scrap left; in fact I venture to say that not one in ten of the younger genera! ion have ever seen aiiv of the real old-time bush with its splendid trees and great variety of form and colour. It is a duty that we owe to ourselves and to posterity to preserve examples of what is one of the finest if not the finest mixed forest in the world. With the exception of that on the Tara-kohe-Totaranui road I do not know of a single example remaining in an accessible Position within-a hundred nules of Nelson. It is priceless because once destroyed it is goiie for ever. You can make an artificial forest of sorts in half a. century with imported trees, but the native trees are without exception of very slow growth and to reproduce mature trees would take at least five hundred years (that is probably, an un-der-estimate). Those who only know-the sombre beech forests of the West Coast and of the Buffer gorge and at the upper and lower ends of Lake Rotoroa can hardly realise the beauty of the mixed forest that grew on the flats in days gone by. One realises that the owner of the Totaranui busli probably cannot afford in the public interest to preserve this bush for posterity but it is up to the people of the wliole district to make an effort to prevent the destruc- < tioii of what is beautiful in itself, and, as I have said can never be replaced. ■ 1 am, etc., A WA gjj B OURN. Nelson, 17th December.