SAVING THE SOIL

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 76, 6 August 1941, Page 6

SAVING THE SOIL

DEFECTS IN PROPOSED LEGISLATION Captain F 7. V. Sanderson, president of the Forest and Bird Protection Society, holds that the proposed legislation for river control, for t**e purpose of checking soil-erosion, does not get down properly to the basis of the evil. "Probably no country in the world is better adapted to the forces of accelerated sheet erosion than is New Zealand to-day owing to its configuration, its immature soil, the destruction of native plant life and other factor-.. The problem is big and vast, involving many spheres. The social one is, however. probably the most important and the most difficult to handle, but if the problem is not tackled in a manner far ahead of that in which any problem has ever been faced in this country. grave disaster is right ahead. Sheet erosion is the problem, not river bank erosion, which is merely the result of sheet erosion, and any effort to tackle the menace at the bottom end might be likened to the keeping of an ambulance at the foot of a precipice instead of erecting a fence along the top. "What action can be suggested? First of all set up a Department of Conservation which would have full control of land utilisation, the plant and all wild life. Go one better than the United States of America, which has a Soil Conservation Service and is acknow leged to be leading the world in its efforts to check accelerated erosion. The first action of the Department of Conservation would be to do that which the pioneers neglected, i.e., demarcate all lands according to their correct utilisation. regardless of ownership.”