THE TARARUA RANGES

Forest and Bird, Issue 45, 1 August 1937, Page 11

THE TARARUA RANGES

(By “Rakau.”)

DANGER OF A ROAD.

THE principal objection to a road through areas of high-country forest such as the bush on the Tararua Ranges is that it will come to be used as a timber-carting road by sawmilling interests. It does not seem to matter whether a forest area is a Crown property or not, even if it is a natural protection forest and a water-supply reserve. The bush is on the way to ruin once a road for wheels is put through it. The sawmiller wangles cutting rights, he cuts at his own sweet will, he pays a small royalty, and leaves the bush a scene of devastation and ruin. For every mature tree felled and hauled out, scores, hundreds of small trees are broken and destroyed and thousands of seedlings. The bush floor is littered with broken branches which, when dry, are most inflammable, an invitation to fire. This is what has occurred in milled forests all over the country, and the wasteful old methods begun more than a century ago continue to-day. The marvel is that any forests survive at all. There is no adequate supervision, and there is no attempt at all to regenerate the milled-over areas. Either they are set fire to and cleared to make way for the settler and his grass, regardless of the obvious unsuitability of high country for agriculture, or exotics are planted with the object of killing the native undergrowth. This under-bush contains the makings of another timber crop when the forest grows, but the foresters do not want that. So the area of our native forests dwindles year by year. Conservation is not merely neglected but is strongly disapproved. Go to the Akatarewa hills and other parts of the Tararua .Ranges and you will see the lamentable process to-day. The present Aka-tarewa-Waikanae road, which was made as a highway for passenger traffic, is largely a timber-hauling road, and the scenes near the road, even at the summit, 1400 feet above sealevel, are a melancholy memento mori to a ruined forest. Fire may sweep the ranges, at any time, beginning in the chopped and sawnover parts on the roadside.