WASTE LANDS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22353, 26 February 1936, Page 18

WASTE LANDS

REGENERATION WORK NATIONAL PLAN POSSIBLE MINISTERS AT FLOCK HOUSE [BY TELEGRAPH —OWN CORRESPONDENT] PALMERSTON NORTH, Tuesday Flock House Estate was visited during the week-end by the Hon \Y. Lee Martin, Minister of Agriculture, and tho Hon. F. Langstone, Minister of Lands. The greater part of tho time was spent on the sand dune country adjoining the sea, where extensive afforestation and marram planting operations have been carried out for tho past 10 or 12 years. The Ministers were greatly impressed with tho regeneration of these waste lands and the extraordinarily rapid and healthy growth of the trees, for which the land was plainly most suitable. They declared tho whole work to be a national ono of tho very greatest importance, and congratulated the trustees of the fund on their far-seeing development policy, which, besides securing undoubted future satisfactory financial results to the estate, had removed all sand menace from the adjoining pasture lands. Mr. Langstono said that it was his intention on his return to Wellington to call for a report from his officers on tho large areas of Government-owned west coast sand dune country with the view to consideration by the Cabinet of a national scheme of regeneration and afforestation. He was amazed that work of this nature, within easy distance of cities and containing such large financial possibilities, which would employ a considerable number of men under most healthy conditions, and which would remove the constant sand menace from very many thousands of acres of rich land, should have been so long overlooked by previous Governments. » The Flock House trustees have shown the way as far as tree planting on tho sand dune areas of the west coast is concerned. They had 2000 acres of this useless country, but in tho course of the past ten years have carried out a programme of annual planting until now approximately 800 acres are in trees, and many hundreds of acres morf> are sufficiently stabilised to allow of further forestry operations.