UREWERA FORESTS

Waipa Post, Volume XXIV, Issue 1640, 12 May 1925, Page 8

UREWERA FORESTS

PLEA FOR THEI'R RESERVATION.

The intimation by the Minister of Lands that the whole area acquired by the Government in the Urewera. country is likely to be reserved in permanent forest is rightly hailed by the Wellington branch of the New Zealand Forestry League as " one of the most important achievements of the year so far as those who are interested in forestry are concerned." The real value of the splendid Urewera forests and of other extensive areas of forest reserved throughout the Dominion will only appear, however, when they are subjected to a process of productive development. Important benefits in land protection and in the regulated distribution of water flow are involved in merely maintaining a due proportion of the area of the Dominion in forest. In addition, however, a considerable proportion of the forests are potential timber farms, capable of yielding continuing and increasing crops. The State forests may not be drawn upon for timber supplies to any great extent in the immediate future, but as time goes on their development and improvement should afford scope for the employment of an increasing population of forejst workers who will for practical purposes be as permanently established on the land as if they wer'e engaged in ordinary agricultural pur-