KAURI REGENERATION

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22515, 4 September 1936, Page 15

KAURI REGENERATION

Sir, —As the oldest protagonist in the cause' of the conservation and scientific management of forests in this Dominion, I must very cordially congratulate and thank you for your excellent article under the above heading in your issue of August 31. The opinion that workedover kauri forest can be restored and that kauri can bo established on manuka scrub lands has, I think, been held for many years by all those who have studied this tree. The late eminent forester. Sir D. E. Hutchins, indeed, in his report on New Zealand forestry mentions the Coromandel Peninsula as an area which is specially suitable for the recreation of kauri forest owing to the steepness of the ranges, the poor character of the sou, the presence of great numbers of young kauri trees, and the existence of numerous small harbours from which the timber could be cheaply transported to Auckland. I am told that since Hutchins wrote his report a good deal of the kauri regrowth has been destroyed through the insensate practice, common here, of setting fire to scrub and fern which everywhere are a stage in progression to forest and which, besides, are valuable for the functions they perform in minimising erosion and floods. In the public addresses on forestry which I have given during the last few years I have called attention to the urgent necessity of having a land-use survey made of all the remaining unalienated forest lands of the Crown and the Maoris so that permanent reservation may be proclaimed over those areas which*it is determined should remain under forest. I even go so far as to advise that the Government take power to prohibit the destruction of the forest on privately owned steep forested land, where it iias been competently decided that, in the public interest, such forest should be preserved. This is done in European States and in Japan. The party of prospectors who reported the kauri 011 the eastern side of Te Arolia state that goats are doing great damage there. Now these animals are equally destructive as deer to forests, probably more so. They have ruined many thousands of square miles in the countries bordering the Mediterranean. They are increasing rapidly in North Island forests as they escape from outlying farms where they are used to check the growth of blackberry. In cases where they are used for this purpose the owners should be obliged to put some kind of yoke round their necks to prevent their getting through the boundary fences. E. Phillips Tubneb.