FOREST DESTRUCTION.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 18174, 21 August 1922, Page 8

FOREST DESTRUCTION.

PENALTY FOR THE PAST. UNLEASHED FLOOD DEMON. IMPAIRED WATERWAYS, Several officers of the Forestry Department have just returned from visits of inspection and investigation in various parts of the North Island, and a statement based on their reports indicates tho necessity for calling an immediate halt in the indiscriminate attacks being made on tho forests of the Dominion, especially on the mountains, where the trees break the rainfall and allow the water to soak into the earth instead of rushing down tho mountain sides in torrents." The surest known way to produce the statement rajis, is to see that au rainfall runs over steep surfaces without having an opportunity to sink int ° s6il. This statement appeared recently n an article dealing with cause and ene when examining mto the origin of devastating river floods in America. It holds good in every part of the globe, and has an exact parallel in the case of_ our own mairi rivers. All investigation into flood statistics in the North IsltMid over a period of years will show that this menace is increasing steadily and that we are rapidly approaching a stage when navigable rivers will be no longer useful as *uch: but will alternate between the danger points of serious depletion of water supply and disastrous torrents sweeping everything before them. Had a special board of engineering experts., been set» up in the pioneering days to formulate a policy of deliberate destructicAi toward our rivers and forests they Could not have shaped things better. River valleys have been swept bare of trees and the head-water forests carved-into with an utter disregard of consequences. When the natural sequence follows in the shape of raging floods, people wonder why it is that every year sees greater destruction wrought by this unleashed demc/ln and raise a cry for protective bants and similar measures, ignoring the fact that this particular trouble, like every other, must be attacked at its source. ignore this question a little longer and arrangements may be confidentlymade to scran the river steamers of the Wangamu and to give up all hope of navigating the Waikato with harges and small craft. As a tourist attraction these rivers wul practically ceaso to exist and will y early become a greater terror to the settlers of the plains and coastal towns. This is not a scare picture but a moral certainty proven many times over in all countries and all climes. . < The remedy lies in immediately tackling the trouble at its source. / The great central watershed of the North Island must be zealously guarded from further denudation of it* remaining forest cover. Not a tree should be cut from it without careful supervision and special danger points along the river valleys should be reforested without dels.y. , „• The kingpin of our remedia.l policy should be the protection and replacing of as much of the destroyed natural cover as is practicable, thus regulating the distribution of rainfall and this in the end will be found a cheap price to pay for the safety of our national well-being.