The Wanganui Chronicle WEDNESDAY, MAY 9, 1934. FLOODS IN CANTERBURY

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 77, Issue 108, 9 May 1934, Page 6

The Wanganui Chronicle WEDNESDAY, MAY 9, 1934. FLOODS IN CANTERBURY

THE floods which have occurred in Canterbury once again provide a reminder that New Zealand is paying a heavy price for having denuded its high country of bush. The Little River district is in close proximity to the hilly country which comprises the Banks Peninsula, and the hills of the Kinlock rise almost abruptly to some five hundred feet. The area covered by the hills of the peninsula is considerable and therefore a large volume of water is shed from it. In former times these hills were bush clad, and the bush delayed the fall of the water and prevented not only flood, but surface soil erosion as well. Floods are inconvenient, but they are temporary in their nature; erosion, however, once completed, is likely to turn a fertile country into a desert.

It should be remembered that ancient Egypt was a much wider land than it is to-day. It was in consequence of the destruction of the forest fringe that the sands of the desert encroached upon the arable lands of the Nile Valley.

Floods of a disastrous nature occur with a regularity in New Zealand that they give frequent notice of the destruction which they are accomplishing. Unfortunately, nothing of a wide enough scale is being’ done to inaugurate a scheme of flood prevention in New Zealand. Considering the suddenness of the fall of the land from the hills to the lowlands, this absence of comprehensive treatment is not an economy, but a permitted waste of the Dominion’s most valuable asset.

Japan leads the way for New Zealand in this respect. The Government has established plantations of trees on the faces of watersheds, the provision of timber being but a secondary consideration in this activity, the primary purpose being the prevention of a sudden flood of water deluging the countryside and carrying away the surface soil.

Unless some comprehensive treatment of the watersheds of New Zealand is undertaken very soon there will quickly come a time when preventive measures will be of no avail. It is useless to await until nature has imposed a reduced quota upon the arable lands of the Dominion.