SOIL EROSION

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 76, 22 April 1941, Page 4

SOIL EROSION

GOVERNMENT TO TAKE ACTION BILL CONTEMPLATED “The Government is going to take steps to deal very effectively indeed with the erosion that is going on in this country,” the Minister of Internal Affairs, Mr Parry, assured the Forest and Bird Protection Society at its annual meeting in Wellington last night. “There will be a Biff brought before Parliament as soon as it is possible to get it down.”

It was time indeed that something was done to arrest erosion, said the Minister. It had been allowed to drag on too long by people not personally concerned. He had been over the hills behind the Esk Valley, Hawkes Bay, where a few years ago serious flooding took place. For miles and miles the hillsides were scarred, as far as the eye could see, and were crumbling and washing away. And when the soil went, all life went.

New Zealand, like every other country, was suffering serious erosion because of ill-planned destruction of the bush in the past. Without destruction of the bush the development of the country could not have taken place, hut unfortunately, instead of its being carried out in a sensible manner, axe and fire have been used indiscriminately.

Since he had been Mininstor, he said, he had done all in his power for the preservation of the beauties of the countryside, and to inculcate a spirit of forest preservation, particularly in the rising generation. He was a lover of the bush, and he regarded the people of to-day as trustees for future generations, to hand on to them what they themselves had been able to enjoy.