FOREST PRESERVATION

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23226, 21 December 1938, Page 12

FOREST PRESERVATION

The strong case for continued zeal in forest preservation, stated to the Auckland council of the New Zealand Institute of Horticulture, did not over-emphasise the importance of the subject. The chief spokesman, Mr. M. J. Galvin, said it would be a terrible thing if the same destruction of forests took place in the next 100 years as had occurred in the last 100. It certainly would, for a similar rate of deforestation would leave New Zealand treeless before long. Fortunately, such an extreme is not likely to be reached, for there is an awakened and growing realisation of the serious results that have already followed too ruthless a destruction of the country's forest cover. But, as Mr. Galvin said, while there is keen individual interest in forest preservation, general public opinion needs to be mobilised and brought into action. Few people, it may be suggested, have it in their power to say whether any forest area shall be preserved' or destroyed. That is true, especially when the appeal for preservation is addressed to a city audience. But all can help to create and strengthen a public conscience on the side of preservation. The individual can watch these small but vitally important points which the officials mentioned —care about matches, camp fires and other possible agents of destruction, to which the forests are so greatly exposed in these days of the motor. The thoughtless tendency to uproot shrubs and young trees for transplanting—too often without success —should be curbed. By every means the second 100 years in New Zealand ought to be a time of restoration to compensate for wholesale destruction in the first 100.