PROTECTION FORESTS.

Forest and Bird, Issue 38, 1 November 1935, Page 4

PROTECTION FORESTS.

(By Captain E. V. Sanderson.)

Neglect in New Zealand.

Dominion’s Future in Peril.

One of the first acts of a new Forest Service is usually to demarcate as “Protection Forests” certain forests which, because of their situation, are necessary as safeguards for farm-lands, hydro-electric works, etc., against floods, erosion, and other evils which inevitably follow the destruction of forests on watersheds. This vitally important matter has not received effective attention in New Zealand.

Supremacy of Milling.

Unfortunately forestry in this country has been almost entirely associated with the milling of timber and the growing of exotic timber trees. Our Forest Service was entrusted with very large areas of native forest, but it can be most emphatically stated that it has never risen to a full responsibility of the charge entrusted to it. Rather our native forests have been decried.

First of all, they were stated to be too slow in growth. Later they were stated to be over mature and decaying. All such assertions have been made in the absence of any thorough research or experiment. Bodies, however, which are not connected with the Forest Service are now planning to make experiments while the Service is contemplating assistance of regeneration in North Auckland. Such experiments have long been advocated by the Forest and Bird Protection Society, but up to the moment the appeal has always fallen on deaf ears. The paramount idea appears to have been to cash in the assets of our native forests and use the proceeds to maintain the Service and plant exotics, mostly Pinus radiata (commonly known as insignis)—a policy which has on more than . one ' occasion been condemned by visiting foresters of note. One is even credited with an emphatic statement that all these insignis pine, forests would fail because, they

are foreign to the forest conditions of this country. In its 1935 report our Forest Service announces the setting aside of 850,000 acres of native forests as protection forests, but this is merely a paper transaction and does not add one tree to our native forests, as this area has merely been transferred from provisional forests to

permanent forests. It is still apt to be milled, and may be, if the timber is worth while, should the exigencies of the Service or some politician scheme for such cutting in fulfilment of election promises. As showing how our native forests have been exploited without any effort at replacement in kind, the figures given by the Government Statistician of the foot-board measure each year can be converted into acres by dividing them by 10,000, which is the recognised average number of feet cut per acre in New Zealand. Such a calculation gives the following results: —In 1931, 21,000 acres were cut; in 1932, 14,000; in 1933, 15,000; in 1934, 17,000. In 1935 the Forest Service estimates that milling has excelled itself in that a total area of 25,000 acres has been cut and replaced with 12,000 acres of exotic seedlings. Add to all this timber-cutting the destruction done by planteating animals in our forests, the damage done by fire, opossum trappers, and other less destructive agents, then one may perhaps be pardoned on coming to the conclusion that our native forests are doomed, unless our Forest Service is compelled to handle its charge under modern forestry methods, which have been so conspicuous by their absence in the past.

Short-sighted Exploitation.

The exploiting of the national heritage is not forestry. In New Zealand a Forest Service should be concerned with many matters besides milling timber —matters such as erosion and flood protection—but the value of the standing tree has apparently not occurred to our Service. Indeed it has been said that our Forest Service cannot look at a tree without estimating the number of millable feet it contains. Other countries are bending their energies and spending vast sums to counteract the disastrous results of past forest destruction. We here are paving, and have paved, the way for similar great expenditure while our primary industries —the sources of our food supplies and other necessaries—are menaced by excessive floods and devastation as a result of the past neglect to demarcate protection forests.

Revenue from Destruction.

What then are the results of the attempt to establish a Forest Service in New Zealand? A Service has existed by drawing revenue from the destruction of our native forests and thereby passing the cost on to the timber consumer such as the house-builder. At the same time large insignis pine plantations have been established which are of little or no value as protection forests, and are nearly all situated where the}' are of

no value as protection forests. What their timber value is has yet to be proved. The urge for all this is most probably the political desire to balance an ever-hungry budget, no matter at what cost to our future prosperity, nay, existence, as a nation, because no nation can prosper without adequate protection forests, especially one so dependent on land products as New Zealand is. The time is long overdue for an adequate overhaul of our forestry operations by some outside expert authority, absolutely unbiased and reliable.