LAND IS LIFE

Forest and Bird, Issue 45, 1 August 1937, Page 6

LAND IS LIFE

(By E. V. Sanderson.)

SOIL-SAVING MEANS LIFE-SAVING.

land supports life. Industry helps man -1- to make the land support him. When industry ceases to do that and supplants the land, and the land is forgotten and man turns to the machine for sustenance, we find that we do not live off the works of our hands but off the fruits of the land.”—Henry Ford. The philosophic Henry Ford could have gone further and said: “Land is life. No —no human life.” Man himself is animated dust, as the ecclesiastical saying implies: “Remember, man, thou art but dust, and into dust thou shalt return.” Soil is formed by the disintegration of rock and the decomposition of decaying vegetation through the ages. It has been computed that it takes at least 500 years to form one inch of soil. In some localities it would take a much longer period. While nature was building up this top soil through the past ages, she kept the earth covered with vegetation. Great forests, living and dying, each contributed their iota to this inch of soil in 500 years. Nature, however, always showed a credit balance. Some of the top soil was carried away by the erosive effects of water and wind; yet still nature was able to show an annual credit balance, in that the vast quantities of humus deposited by the living and decaying vegetation were always more than that which were removed by erosion. Thus, after millions of years, nature was able to produce the land which now forms our farms and which covered our hillsides. ; The lowlands arrested much of the top soil washed from the hillsides on its way to the sea and thereby became richer than the steep slopes. When man comes along with his socalled progressive measures, he destroys the vegetation, he ploughs the hillsides, grows crops which . supply not only himself, but many insects, with ample food. He bares the forest-clad hills, . over-grazes them with his stock, and causes this precious top soil to be washed away at a far greater rate than one inch in 500 years. In some instances, the loss is at the rate of one inch in 20 years, on steep hillsides. Clearly,

this folly shows a heavy debit balance, as against nature’s credit balance; but we must live. Civilisation has not yet shown us how we can carry on our present wasteful methods of exploiting the capital and, at the same time, obviate those disasters which have overcome all civilisations that have attempted to live in the same suicidal manner. Two possible exceptions may be cited. One is Japan, which carries an enormous population, and yet does not allow her land to be destroyed by ever-increasing erosion. She retains some 65 per cent, of her land in forest, and takes immediate steps to repair erosion in its intitial state. To-day she is one of the most virile and progressive nations on earth. Nature decrees the survival of the fittest. Another instance which might be cited is our own Maori race. They lived on the interest nature produced for some 600 years, and when the white man first began to displace them, the capitalthe top soilwas intact. Were the Maoris more intelligent people, and are we striving to reach their level? An experiment on a scale never before attempted on this earth is at present being tried in Southern Russia, in an endeavour to make man’s demand for food supplies conform with nature’s inexorable exactions so that extra water can be available. The rivers discharging into the Arctic are being diverted into the Volga, for vast irrigation works. This is being done in an attempt to counteract threatened desert conditions in the great wheat-growing areas. A credit balance in nature’s scheme could be assured in New Zealand if sufficient areas of hillsides were allowed to revert to their natural state. In this manner water and silt would be released gently onto the lower fertile lands, and the eventual forest should yield a perpetual revenue of great profit owing to the coming world shortage of timber, if it was worked on proper forestry methods which would enable the forest to perpetuate itself. If, however, our land resources continue to be mishandled as in the past, then disaster must

overcome New Zealand, and our attempt to prosper in this Dominion will end; it will be classed by future historians as an experiment that failed. We shall be left with an eroded land beyond the power of man to remedy. The mountains will be high rocky masses, with scarcely any vegetation visible, and most of our hill country will assume a similar aspect, while the present fertile lands will be largely covered with debris scattered over it by rivers fed with rocky matter from the highlands. This will be the outcome of such deplorable blunders as

grazing and burning high tussock country, destroying forest on steep and high country, permitting plant-eating mammals in our forests, over-grazing land which should be in forest, and other mistakes. Shall this be the bleak and blank heritage we bequeath to posterity, or shall we awaken in time and use our land resources in a manner which will conform with Nature’s requirements? Or shall we allow individual greed and recklessness to destroy the country?