TIMBER RESOURCES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 18772, 28 July 1924, Page 6

TIMBER RESOURCES.

In the course of a paper read before the recent annual conference of the New Zealand Farmers' Union, Mr„ L. Macintosh Ellis, the Director of Forestry, expressed! justifiable pleasure at the work done by his department. In four years—it waa as late as 1919 that a forest policy was first adopted—excellent progress has been made. An area of nearly 7,400,000 acres is under the protection and management of the forest authority. At least half of the Dominion's commercial forests have been technically investigated, while an exhaustive stocktaking of the indigenous bush has been completed. Fire prevention has been effectively initiated. Planting has assumed i large dimensions. Viewed financially, | " forestry is now entirely self-sup- [ porting in New Zealand": the | country is receiving its fair share of the. value of the timber that is cut and is thereby getting funds sufficient to restore the forests. Research has achieved much in the direction of the better harvesting of timber resources and the more economical use of forest products genei-ally. It is a good record, to which Mr. Ellis' own skill and enthusiasm have very largely contributed. He gives great credit to the enlightened co-operation of many public bodies and private citizens, as an outcome of the growth '!of a definite " forest consciousness." But, as Mr. Ellis urges, much remains to be done. Another 2,000,000 acres of Crown-owned

forest land should bo dedicated to the production of timber crops. There is still an annual consumption of forest produce greater by many million feet than the annual increment grown, so that, unless the precautions he advocates be taken, the visible supplies will be exhausted in from 35 to 45 years. That is a possibility not pleasant fco contemplate. It means the loss of an essential product. It can be turned into what Mr. Ellis has called a "streamflow production" by a courageous development of forest policy in the light of the past four years' experience. His appeal goes wider than the limits of the Farmers' Union.: It behoves every citizen to remember that trees have no votes, and to insist that, for the sake of the Dominion's future, the vital necessity of securing a continued timber supply be not forgotten by the political powers that be.