WHITE PINE BUTTER-BOXES.

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 53, Issue 3842, 4 December 1936, Page 6

WHITE PINE BUTTER-BOXES.

IT is gratifying to note that the Government is alive to the necessity of providing and conserving a continuous supply of white pine for butter-box-making. In a statement, which is published to-day, the Minister of Lands, in his capacity as Commissioner of State Forests, reviews the steps that are being taken in this direction. It is only natural that the Government, as the exporting authority under the State guaranteed price system, should be rightly concerned about the supply and cost of white pine, which is the most suitable of our exotic timbers for box-making. According to Mr Langstone, since he came into office he has laid down two salients principles to be observed, namely: (1) the conservation of all State-owned supplies of white pine for local essential uses, and (2) the limitation of exports of white pine to essential Australian requirements. This is as it should be. The New Zealand dairying industry must have first claim on the Dominion’s own supply. According to the Minister, South Westland contains about 70 per cent of the total supplies of white pine remaining in the country, and it is his policy—and a policy which will find wide endorsement—to re-

train from opening up the reserves there until such time as they are required for the local market. Therefore he has seen fit, and rightly so, to grant milling privileges in the area conditional upon the use of the timber for New Zealand requirements only. None the less, the time has arrived when “ the long view ” dictates the desirability of systematic reafforestation, for the facts of the case suggest that conservation and replanting offer the most satisfactory guarantee of adequate supplies of white pine in the years to come when the present natural forests shall have been depleted to the point of exhaustion.