AUSTRALIA’S TIMBER

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXII, Issue 19301, 2 May 1925, Page 5

AUSTRALIA’S TIMBER

AN ALARMING SITUATION SYDNEY, May 1. A comprehensive report submitted by Mr C. Lane Poole, the Commonwealth. forestry adviser to the Minister of Home Industries, Senator Pearce, states: We are importing 42.18 per r<?nt. of our timber requirements, a figure which, in view of the youth of Australia and the relatively small population, is very disquieting. The position is rendered still more alarming when the nature of our imports and local productions arc examined. Air Poole asserts that the importance of the industry is quite overlooked in tli Commonwealth. The only State with an apparent surplus of timber is West Australia, which in 1923-24 exported 133,500,000 super feet, of which about one-third went to other States and the balance overseas; but West Australia is cutting out her jarrah and kauri forests six times as fast as they arq growing. Were she to cut out according to forestry rules, that is, to cut only the increment of her forests, she would have no timber to export. While the area of forests of the Commonwealth is set out in the year books as 69,054,000 acres, the foresters’ estimates of true forest land place it at 24,500. Instead, however, of producing 12,000 million super feet, these forests are producing only 5874 million super feet. The inadequacy of oar hardwood forests is due to the gross over-cutting that has taken place, in the past, and to the very paltry efforts the Stalos have made to restore their for-

ests and so manage them so as to get a maximum yield per acre. The condition of our heritage of 24,500,600 acres,><Tliat it is mainly covered with a "Gad growth of uneven aged timber, which has grown up more or less haphazardly, after the sawmillers have picked the best out. Their increment has been cancelled by loss through lire and other causes. The area actually dedicated as forest is only 10,502,634 acres. Only in two •States, New South Wales and Victoria, are the financial resources at the disposal of the forestry authorities in any way commensurate with the work to be carried out there. They are also lacking in trained foresters.