THE FOREST PASSES

Taranaki Daily News, 6 August 1932, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE FOREST PASSES

MISUSE AND WASTE (By E. Phillips Turner, F.R.G.S., late Director of Forests in New Zealand. —Part . II.) At the start of organised European settlement in New Zealand, about 1840, the area of the forests'in New Zealand was about 40,000,000 acres, or approximately 60 per cent, of the total area of the Dominion. In the North Island the only extensive areas of open country were the Taupo Plains, the sand dunes, and the more or less narrow strips at numerous localities along the coast. In the South Island the area of open.country was far greater. Roughly, it extended south from the centre of the Marlborough province to the Clutha River, and longitudinally from the sea to the main alpine backbone of the island.By 1909 the area of forest had been reduced to about 17,070,000 acres, or only 25.9 per cent, of the area of New Zealand. Recently many . overseas travellers through the Dominion have remarked on, and indeed many of us have observed, the unwise deforestation that has taken place on steep and high ranges which, through indifference or ignorance, have been alienated from the State, and which,' under wiser administration, would have been reserved for their high protective value. There is scarcely a district in the Dominion where one does not see considerable areas of steep deforested hills which are now little more than alternations of landslips and strips of fern and scrub; or if there should be some strips of rough grass, it is fast being suppressed by fern and scrub. In such cases the district has lost the protective value of the forest; the settler has lost the capital he spent in clearing and improving the land and the mortgagee, who is very, of ten the State, has had the value of his security lessened through part of the land becoming non-productive, and therefore practically valueless. Until quite recently the clamour for settlement was so great and the value of forest so little appreciated that lands carrying good stands of milling timbers were sometimes alienated without the value of the timber being taken into consideration. Afterwards the purchaser has often sold the timber for far more than he paid in the first place for the land. In such cases, though the purchaser of the land has benefited by the sale of the timber, the State has lost revenue which it should ‘have received for it. Not infrequently, however, when land carrying good milling timber has been sold without charge for the timber, it has.been wasted as the settler, wanting to make immediate use of his land, would not wait a few years for his timber to beedme profitably marketable. The waste of timber through lack of appreciation of its value has been enormous. Take, for instance, the sales on the “royalty on output” system. Until about’ 1903 all timber' was sold on a system under which the royalty was paid on the .sawn output of the mill. Under this system only the best trees in the bush were taken, the others being left to be burnt. If a. log fell off the tram at an awkward place it would often not be recovered as it would not have to.be paid for if left. In the mill an unnecessary amount of timber was cut off the logs as slabs, and boards with minor faults were thrown on the slab heap. Not only has waste occurred, but the State has lost potential revenue, for sometimes operators with consciences would make wrong returns of the different -species cut and respective amounts of each. In about 1903, owing to the increased value of the kauri and its diminishing supplies, the system was abandoned in Auckland, and the more rational system of appraising the standing timber and disposing of it by tender or auction was adopted for kauri. Under this system the miller pays for all the marketable timber and is, therefore, careful not to waste it. The system was gradually extended to other timbers. It was adopted in the Wellington district about 1909; but in other'parts of New Zealand the bad old system was continued until its abolishment shortly, after the Forestry Department was established in 1919..

Further waste occurred under the system of administration by mining wardens. Prior to the passing of the Forests Amendment Act, 1926, the timber forests in the mining districts were administered by the mining wardens. These functionaries were magistrates; they were not required to have any knowledge of forestry or timber, and they had no field staff. As all timbercutting rights in mining districts —and all the West Coast forests were in mining districts—could be granted only by wardens,. it can be imagined how inefficient the forest administration was. The timber cut by operators was paid for on the wasteful royalty-on-output system, and areas granted to the licensees were often ill-defined or not defined, with the result that trespass over the legal boundaries occurred, whilst the only supervision of operations was that of Crown Lands rangers when they could be spared from their -proper duties. Though figures cannot be given representing the loss of money and waste of timber suffered by the State as a result of this archaic administration of its forests, there is no doubt that it is very great. Greatest of all, perhaps, has been the waste by fires. New Zealand, in common with other young Anglo-Saxon countries, has been most culpably careless with respect to protecting her forests from fire. In ordinary years New Zealand forests will not carry fire, and when fires occur in fern or scrub aajoining forests it is only the periphery of the" forest in which the big trees are killed. But from the early days these scrub fires have taken place every few years, and the successive small encroachments on the forest have resulted, in the destruction of a large aggregate area. But about every ten years in New Zealand there is an exceptionally dry summer, where even many of the indigenous trees may be killed by drought. In such a season the forest will burn, and there are many instances of such destruction in all the land districts except, perhaps, Westland. In fact, even in Westland I have seen areas of land on which the forest has been killed by fire. The area of beech forest destroyed by fires must be very great, especially "in the Nelson district. However, the most serious loss from this cause has been, with the valuable kauri forests in the Auckland province. It has been estimated that by the burning of the Puhipuhi kauri forest the State lost 455,'000,000 feet of kauri timber which, on the price prevailing before the present slump, would be worth £-2.265,000 to the. State! (To be continued.)