AFFORESTATION

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 20111, 2 April 1928, Page 3

AFFORESTATION

THE STATE'S WORK MR ELLIS’ RECORD [ Special “Chronicle” Service. ] WELLINGTON, March 31. Remarkable strides in state afforestation have been maidje in New Zealand under the control of Mr L. Macintosh Ellis, Director of the State Forest Service, who retires from that post to-day. Between 1896 and 1921 tho year in which Mr Ellis took up his post at the head of the newly createif Forestry Department, less than 40,000 acres of forest had been planted in the Dominion. In the six succeeding years a further 60,000 acres has been sown and a further 25,000 acres will be planted this year. This will put the service well on the way to realising its objective of 300,000 acres by 1935. At the same time, improvements in forestry control have reduced the cost of sowing one acre of state forest plantations from about £lO in 1921 to less than £2 in 1926 and 1927. Another important feature of his work has been the creation of an almost perfect record for fire-preven-vention in state forest domains. Last year the total losses in the 7,600,000 acres of State-owned forest in the Dominion amounted to £l2. The present policy of the service, the establishment of soft-woods supplies in each province the creation of mn/»r State plantations, the obtaining of wider uses for indigenous trees and introduction of the best species of other countries which lend themselves to the New Zealand climate, investigation in timber mechanics and physics, woodpreservation and the search for derived products, is practically tho creation of the director.

At the same time, tho Department has been run on business lines, and in the last three years has shown a nett trading profit of £128,566, £152,550 and £161.469 from timber sales, royalties and leases. The planting record has been steadily rising. In 1921-25 20,000 acres of forest were sown, in 1925-26 18,000 acres and in 1926-7 20,000 acres.