PASTORAL LANDS

Forest and Bird, Issue 55, 1 February 1940, Page 5

PASTORAL LANDS

Excessive Grazing and Burning Off

PT'HE chief cause of deterioration of high country grassland areas in the South Island and in some inland parts of Hawke’s Bay is the absence of any regulation of grazing. Excessive burning over of grassland is also a major factor in the exposure of large areas to erosion and desiccation. It has long been apparent here that the totally unrestricted unscientific methods of the large pastoralists have caused serious deterioration of very considerable areas of tussock land. The sheep graziers have dealt with millions of acres of hill country after their own primitive methods, with the result that the

roots of the native grass have been damaged and destroyed by annual or more frequent burning-off to induce new growth. Overgrazing by sheep has ruined several large runs covering watersheds, and floods and erosion are among the results of such ignorant methods of pastoralists.

It is fitting to refer here to a recent announcement that cattle grazing is to be tried as an experiment on a large area of deteriorated land which has been reduced to non-usable condition by prolonged over-stocking with sheep and by repeated burning-off. But as this country is a watershed several thousands of feet above sea level, where Marlborough and Nelson provinces meet, it would seem wiser to leave it alone and let it revert to bush and other vegetation as a protective forest area. All such misused high country will restore itself in time if it is simply left alone.

That is the course which seems advisable in some of the higher, broken parts of Hawke’s Bay and Poverty Bay, where ill-judged clearingoff of timber and so-called scrub has made such a mess of the hills with landslips and erosion that grows worse every year. A high engineering authority at Gisborne gave it as his opinion after the floods of last year that it was advisable to let a large area of the despoiled back country revert to bush and assist the progress with a programme of reafforestation. That advice may well be applied to many other parts of New Zealand.