WANTON DESTRUCTION

New Zealand Times, Volume LI, Issue 11855, 14 June 1924, Page 6

WANTON DESTRUCTION

BUSH VANDALS AT WORK. Considerable complaints have been niade lately against the wanton destruction of the native bush clumps along the Waikaremoana road (says the Napier “Telegraph”). The Public Works Department, which is mainly responsible, has done and is doing good work in making roads accessible for opening up the district, but their instructions’ to cut down any wood, green or otherwise, for use, and, incidentally, principally for the use of their workers and other roadworkers, as firewood, is a grave mistake, and this in the face of unlimited supplies of firewood able to be procured within a mile from their camp. This state of vandalism has been going on for the past year or two, and emphatic protests have been made without avail. Such native trees as titoki, ngaio. rautawhiri, and kowhai, which make the beauty of the landscape, and which had been jealously guarded, for many years from destruction by the pioneer settlers, are now being' tothlessly destroyed, thus wiping out the heritage of a young and virile district and depriving it of its much-vaunted beauty in the drive from Wairoa to Lake Waikaremoana.