TREE PLANNING

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23918, 20 September 1939, Page 8

TREE PLANNING

CONSERVATION URGED ESSENTIAL TO WORLD PROGRESS (From Our Own Correspondent) LONDON,-Aug. 24, At the conference of the Men of the Trees, at Cambridge, a resolution was passed unanimously, that tree-planting and soil conservation should be the first consideration in any policy for the welfare and development of the Empire." Upon local authorities in urban districts was urged the importance of consulting such organisations as Men of the Trees who could recommend expertsDr G V Jacks, who has been travelling in Russia, speaking of soil conservation, said men held land from nature on the unchangeable condition that they treated it at least as well as wild life. In some parts of the world the price was too high, and to Nature would be left the restorative process. Soil exhaustion was the greatest of agricultural problems The fertility of British soil had been marvellously increased in the last century and a-half. The secret of prevention ol soil erosion, which the United States had grasped, was co-operation between all users of the land That fundamental co-operation was in South Africa became the driving force of economic necessity was lacking, and in East Africa because the majority there had. no instinct for co-operation. Unless the system of land tenure was adapted to the conservation of the soil, effort was ineffective. Dr Jacks said that he regarded London as one of Nature’s triumphs —an association of some 9.000,000 people packed together in a few square miles, living in harmony that compared favourably with that which prevailed in the forests, meadows. and marshes which formerly occupied the site. To feed London and other big cities, a high standard of productivity of the soil had been necessary, but there was a limit beyond which the productivity of the soil would not go.