NEW ZEALAND'S FORESTS

Otago Witness, Issue 3274, 13 December 1916, Page 49

NEW ZEALAND'S FORESTS

REPORT BY MR HUTCIIINS. (Frou Oue Own Correspondent.) AUCKLAND. December 5. An important report upon State forestry is now in course of preparation for submission to tho Government by Mr D. E. Hub chins, who has just concledcd a visit to tho Waipoua kauri forest, North Auckland. "My report will indicate that tho most urgent thing to do now is to demarcate tho forests of tho dominion," said Mr Hutching in the course of an interview. "By this I mean the inspecting and separating of land which would bo best preserved lor forest from that which would bo most suitable for agriculture. I was asked to visit the Waipoua kauri forest and demarcate it, and] this work I have just carried out. Where I found that there had been good forest on poor soil, or the possibility of there being a forest on poor soil, I added those areas on my plan to tho boundaries of the kauri forest. Where tho forest was inferior, and so all the better for that purpose, I cut it off for settlement. This is the method that will have to be employed generally throughout New Zealand if the country is to start scicntilic forestry on tho lines of practically all tho other civilised countries except England."

Mr Hutchins went on to say that up to the present England had relied on freetrade to provide herself with timber. - There waa practically no State forest there, and the results of that policy had been making themselves strikingly felt in recent years. When tho war broke out tho United Kingdom was paying for imported timber the enormous sum of £43,000,000 yearly. "There is no doubt that it is the example of England which in bygone, years has allowed New Zealand to drift into its prosent position of having no State foresty," continued Ilr Hutchins. "At present there is practically no State forestry here, as the term is understood in ether countries. However, there is no use crying over spilt milk. Areas which should have been demarcated out as natural forests during the last 60 years have been in great part lost to tho dominion, and all that remains now is to demarcate tho rest and save all that is possible from the wreck. My proposal is that the Waipoua forest and all others demarcated in New Zealand shall bo treated like those of other countries with State forestry. It has been thought that native trees grow too slowly for economical preservation, and that tho natural reproduction is too poor Five weeks in the kauri forest at Waipoua has shown mo that kauri in the natural forests of New Zealand has an average growth faster than the ordinary timber trees of Europe. Then, as regards, natural reproduction, while this is far from being as strong as in some classes of forest, it is quite sufficient for all practical purposes. " In New Zealand there is tho choice." said Mr Hutchins, " of introducing valuable self-spreading timbers into natural forests or of destroying tho latter, and, where the ground is poor, allowing it to run into a waste of bramble, gorse, and tea-tree. It has been thought that the forestry question in the dominion might be allowed to slumber, and the future needs of tho country ba provided for by plantations. An excellent start has been made in fine plantations, to bo seen at Rotorua, but to provide for the present consumption of timber in New Zealand by artificial plantations at this rate would cost the country, by the time the plantations mature, with interest, a sum of £20,000.000. As against that we have tho fact that natural reproduction costs nothing. With forests under tho care of skilled forest tors, natural regenration can be directed not only to keeping up the forests _ to thoil present "condition, but to improve it."