STATE AFFORESTATION.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21774, 13 October 1932, Page 8

STATE AFFORESTATION.

It should not be a matter for surprise that the Director of Forestry, in his annual report, views the operations of the State Forest Service in New Zealand with considerably more enthusiasm than the National Expenditure Commission does. Their grim purpose ever before them “ to indicate the economies that might be effected if particular policies were either adopted, abandoned, or modified,” the commissioners placed foremost in their review the. facts that, the approximate expenditure of the forestry division in 1931-32 was £200,000, exclusive of interest and loan charges of £90,000, while receipts amounted in the same period to some £55,000 only, and that the estimate of receipts in the current year does not exceed £41,000. The Director of Forestry, on the other 1 hand, lays emphasis on a reduction in ; last year’s expenditure of £117,888. It appears* howfever, that the National Expenditure Commission is convinced that, economical though the activities of the State Forest Service may be, their scope must be very considerably curtailed, not alone as an economy measure, though the saving is, of course, a first consideration, but also because in its opinion State afforestation in New Zealand is proceeding years ahead of its time. In 1921 an sffforestation programme was laid down providing that 300.000 acres of exotic trees Should be planted by 1935. The work of the State Fprest Service was later so accelerated in order to provide work for the unemployed that at the present time the total programme has been exceeded by 47,000 acres, the number of acres now planted being 347,000, or 127.000 acres more than should now 1 have been planted if the original programme had been observed. In addition, it is learned from the Director ofForestry’s report that the area planted in trees by private companies is about a quarter of a million acres and that the operations of the State and private companies combined in the past year added over 90,000 acres to afforestation areas. The commission recommends that . State planting operations should be reduced gradually during the next three years, the work being put in hand purely as unemployment relief and financed wholly by the Unemployment Board. As for the future of afforestation, the commission is definitely discouraging, recommending “that under no circumstances should further planting be undertaken after the completion of this programme.” The emphatic nature of the commission’s statements may be expected to ensure that they will receive the earnest attention of the Government, with a view to determining whether the operations of the State Forest Service have, apart from the very considerable expenditure entailed of a not immediately productive nature, been planned on a scale in excess of the requirements of the Dominion. ; As afforestation is useful and likely to be remunerative in the long run, it would certainly seem to provide a better avenue for the employment of those who are out of work than some of the schemes upon which the funds of the Unemployment Board are expended.