THE FLOOD DEMON

New Zealand Times, Volume XLIX, Issue 11293, 19 August 1922, Page 5

THE FLOOD DEMON

HOW IT CAN BE LOOSEB WARNING AGAINST EFFECTS OF DEFORESTATION. RISK TO RIVER NAVIGATION. Several officers of the Forestry Department have just returned from visits of inspection and investigation in various parts of the North Island, and a statement based on their reports indicates “the necessity for calling an immediate halt in the indiscriminate attacks being made on the forests of the Dominion, especially on the mountains, where the trees break the rainfall and allvv the water to soak into the earth instead of tearing down the mountain sides in torrents.” DEPLETION OF WATER SUPPLY. The statement says: — ‘‘The surest known way to produce floods is to see that all rainfall runs downhill over steep surfaces without having an opportunity to sink into tho soil. This statement appeared recently in an article dealing with cause and effect when examining into the origin of devastating river floods in America. It holds good in every part of the globe, and has an exact parallel in the oase of our own main rovers. An investigation into flood statistics in the North Island over a period of_ years will show that this menace is increasing steadily and that we are rapidly approaching a stage when navigable rivers will be no longer useful as such but will alternate between the danger points of serious depletion of water Bupply and disastrous torrents sweeping everything before them. “Had a special board, of engineering experts been set up in the pioneering days' to formulate a polio’ of deliberate destruction towards our rivers and forests they could not have shaped things better. River valleys have been swept bare of trees and the head-water forests earved-into with an utter disregard of consequences. ‘‘When the natural sequence follows in the shape of raging floods, people wonder why it is that every year sees greater destruction wrought by this unleashed demon and raise a cry for protective banks and similar measures, ignoring the fact that this particular trouble, lake every other, must be attacked at its source. SCRAP THE STEAMERS. "Ignore this question a little lemgo: and arrangements may be confidently made to scrap the river steamers of the Wanganui and to give up all hope of navigating the Waikato with barges and small craft. As a tourist attraction these rivers will practically cease to exist and will yearly become a greater terror to the denizens of the plains and coastal towns. This is .not a scare picture but a moral certainty proven many times over in all countries and all climes. “The remedy lies in immediately tackling the trouble at its source. The great central watershed of the North Island must be zealously guarded from further denudation of its remaining forest cover. Not a tree should be cut from it without careful supervision and special danger points along the river valleys should do reforested without delay. “The kingpin of our remedial policy should be the protection and replacing of as much of the destroyed natonal cover as is practicable, thus regulating the distribution of rainfall and this in the end will be found a cheap price to pay for the safety of our national well-being.”