C.—3.

CHAPTER VI.—FOREST-PROTECTION. Section A. —From Fire. 43. As forecast in the last report, the system of recording fires has been intensified to include much closer attention to records of fires that are remote from actual forest areas ; and the arrangements for notification of distant fires and intercommunication during the progress of fires have been amplified. The results of intensified recording show that 2,029 fires were seen and reported by forest officers during last year. Many of these, of course, had no significance to actual standing forest, and were perfectly legitimate land-clearing fires. There can equally be no doubt that many of them were unnecessary and avoidable, and that the constant incidence of such widespread and unnecessary fires has a very evil effect upon the soil of the Dominion. The more modern intercommunication equipment installed and partially installed (wireless on Rangers' trucks, &c.) proved useful, but has not yet reached its maximum efficiency, and essential wartime restrictions on free use of such methods by civilians prevented its extension. Similarly, military caution demanded the cessation of the daily broadcast of dangerous fire weather in special localities that was begun two seasons ago. Reference to Appendices V and VI will show how schedules of fire incidence reflect clearly the changes in local weather. In Appendix V, mid-October to late November shows a whole group of fires in the mid-Wellington district, but no fires elsewhere. Appendix VI similarly shows an early January fire incidence in Southland, a faithful reflection of the spell of excellent midsummer weather enjoyed by the southern province. The actual damage caused by these fires was, with one exception, so slight as to be negligible ; but it is to be remembered that the slightness of damage in forest fires is usually in direct proportion to the vigilance and alertness of the patrol staff of the forest workers. But even the utmost vigilance may on occasion fail to avert disaster ; and on Boxing Day a full conflagration penetrated the fire defences at Eyrewell State Forest, in Central Canterbury, and well over 1,000 acres of young pines were destroyed before the concentrated efforts of forest staff, settlers from near and far, police, and Air Force personnel succeeded in stamping out the flames. The origin of the fire is still a mystery, though there is no doubt of its location. The fire began in a paddock of thin dry grass next the forest. In the paddock were clumps of gorse and a very open stand of old eucalypt trees. The thin grass in still hot weather evidently burned gently without smoke, and it was not till the fire had a good hold that smoke from gorse and trees revealed its presence to lookout towers. A dead flat area, dry, and without available water save from one small race was not easily handled—the fire running in several directions. It is worthy of record that low-flying aircraft from a neighbouring military aerodrome volunteered and gave excellent assistance in these circumstances in advising the limits of the fire and its different lines of advance, the first instance in the Dominion of co-operation between aircraft and forest-fire fighters. 44. The scheme initiated during the previous fire season was continued whereby meteorological and fire-hazard readings taken thrice daily at eighteen recordingstations in the principal forest areas through New Zealand were available to local officers to assist them in determining the extent of the immediate fire danger. Until it was necessary to impose war restrictions on the radio broadcasting of local weather data, the warnings from the central co-ordinating station indicated whether or not those conditions of hazard were likely to change for the worse : as in the previous year, the essential co-operation of the Weather Bureau was readily forthcoming. Although sufficient data have not yet been accumulated to develop a simple but accurate fire-hazard rating, nevertheless the scheme has been successful in economizing expenditure and in improving the efficiency of the fire-fighting organization. The relative humidity- and fire-hazard-indicator sticks attained new low levels — e.g., in North Canterbury the former reached 17 per cent., while the moisture contents of both the 100 gram and 400 gram sticks dropped to 6 per cent. The 400 gram hazard-indicator sticks which record the cumulative drying effect of

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