SOME FIGURES & A MORAL

New Zealand Times, Volume XLIX, Issue 11247, 27 June 1922, Page 6

SOME FIGURES & A MORAL

“Leave the forests to produce their crops until the unimproved lands in the hands of the individual are brought to a reasonable standard of production.” Such is the moral deduced by Forest-Assistant A. M. Perham from the official agricultural and pastoral lands statistics showing the total area of land occupied in the Dominion, tho area occupied and unimproved, and tho area occupied and improved. It is, indeed, a striking fact that out of the, in round figures, 43 million acres of occupied land m New Zealand, no less than 25 millions are returned as unimproved; while but 18 million acres are improved—much of it only to the extent of being surface-sown in grass. The details, in thousands of acres, are as under:— •g | A-i ! 1 Land District. 3< 2* p jg I | S 3 p !

Of course, as Mr Perham states in the “Monthly Newsletter of the Forest Service,” “it has to be definitely understood that a large proportion of unimproved land is incapable of being brought to a highly productive state; but there is no doubt that there is scope for very great improvement.” The unoccupied land of New Zealand amounts to 22,555,000 acres out of the 66,101,000 acres in all of the Dominion. This includes, of course, waste lands; but a large proportion of it is covered with virgin forest. In view, therefore, of the wholesale wastage and wanton destruction of so much of pur native forest in the past; in view of the threatened serious shortage in the world's supply of timber; and in view, also, of the adverse climatio changes brought about by the destruction of our forests, one cannot but endorse the moral quoted at the head of this article. Moreover, the unoccupied lands are, as a rule, further removed from the centres of popula-

tion and industry, and less well served by roads, bridges, and railways than the unimproved occupied lands. From this point of view, too, therefore, tlio wisdom must he manifest of first bringing into reasonable use the 25 million acres of occupied but unimproved land.

North, Auckland .. 3,010 1,469 1,540 Auckland 4,393 2,130 2,263 Hawke's Bay ..... Taranaki 1,700 1,585 3,115 1,711 338 1,373 ■Wellington 4,818 1,313 3,504 Total North Island 18,631 6,836 11,797 Nelson 1,324 967 357 Marlborough 2,569 2,190 378 Westland 1,772 1,634 137 Canterbury 8,078 5,321 2,756 Otago 7,919 6,525 1,393 Southland 3,248 1,910 1,337 Total South Island 21,912 18,550 6,36l Dominion Total .. 43,546 25,386 18,159