THE STATE FORESTRY REPORT, 1918-19.

New Zealand Journal of Agriculture, Volume XX, Issue 3, 20 March 1920, Page 198

THE STATE FORESTRY REPORT, 1918-19.

During last parliamentary session appeared the first annual report of the newly constituted Department of Forestry— the first yearly State forestry report for New Zealand. Previous to this forestry had been a branch of the Lands Department, and had concerned itself with little more than exotic timber plantations outside the boundaries of the indigenous forests. Forestry in New Zealand to-day may be defined as the building-up of national forest estates out of the rough-and-tumble ' forestal chaos of the past. One of the first steps in serious forestry taken by Sir Francis Bell, Commissioner of . State Forests, was to ascertain what were the forests still left to the State. The report under review gives what is perhaps the first reliable information yet published on that very important .point... The total area of forest .now owned by the. State is stated at. about 10,478,247 acres. This is actually 15-9 per cent, of the total area of the Dominion, as against the 25 per cent, considered necessary .in other well-populated civilized countries; against 35 per cent.' achieved in that highly industrialized area, the Rhine Valley ; and against 65 per cent, aimed at in the forest policy of Japan.

This area of 10,500,000 acres owned by the State requires the early attention of the people and Parliament in two particulars. Firstly, only 1J million acres, of the total is now considered millable, and thus able, when in charge of foresters, topay profits on its working and rejuvenation. The rest, to be put in order as a productive property, will require expenditure on roads, nurseries, and buildings, together with the settlement of population. For this we must be prepared to find funds or to suffer the reproach and loss attendant on unproductive or poorly productive areas.

in our midst. Secondly, of the area of 10,500,000 acres, only 654,214 acres when the report was published were under the Commissioner of Forests and the Forestry Department [some additions have since been made]. The fate of the national forest area will be watched with interest in future departmental -reports. There will be additions to it in Maori lands bought up (mostly from the Urewera country) ; there will also be subtractions as areas suitable for agriculture are cut off in the process of forest demarcation. Details of the forest areas in scenic reserves, national parks, national-endowment lands, and milling-areas are given. Actually these are parts of the 10,500,000 acres, much of which has been allowed to become burdened with rights.

The timber plantations of exotics have been continued on the lines of previous years, but with better supervision and a correction of the faults reported in the Forest Commission Report of 1913. The total area planted up to date is 35,444 acres, of which two-thirds is in the North Island on pumice land. . The economic position of planting timber on easily ploughable pumice lands may be open to question, but in the South Island the economic position is stronger both as regards quality of soil and accessibility, especially since the opening of the new plantation at Balmoral on very poor soil, and on the Culverden railway-line. Prison labour is now confined to one station on the Kaingaroa Plains. A well-organized treeplanting camp for returned soldiers (named Waireka) was formed near the Waiotapu Plantation. It affords outdoor employment on a healthy site, and may develop into a forest settlement. The most urgent matter now facing the plantations is to replace the present /casual labour by that of permanent settlers on small farms in the neighbourhood. In the early days it was not realized that forestry means continuous labour-that it is not merely planting a tree to-day and cutting it forty or fifty years hence. '

The forest revenue for the year was £26,375, but of this only the sum of £4,937 was paid into the State Forest Account. With book-keeping such as this—and it has been the same for many years past— forest finance of the Dominion remains an unknown quantity. The expenditure seems to have amounted to about £42,000, deducting the merely book entries shown in the statement. There was a special forest vote of £200,000, and the comparative 'small amount of forest work accomplished during the year' was due to delay in getting together a forest staff, which in this report is forecasted at one research officer and six forest inspectors, together with the office staff in Wellington. *• The rank and file, of the Department, consisting of resident foresters and rangers, remains for the future. The active organizing of the forests into working units has not yet begun.

The report describes several important departures which can only be touched upon in this brief review. Regulations have been made which are some advance towards a valid Forest Act for New Zealand. Provisional State forestslands reserved pending regular forest demarcation—have been set on foot, and 1,800,000 acres .were ready for proclamation at the, close of the year under report. The anomaly of Mining Wardens possessing destructive forest powers has been reduced but not abolished. . \ •

The year’s output of sawn timber in the Dominion amounted ’ to nearly 228 million superficial feet, of which almost exactly one-half was rimu ; the output of kauri was under one-tenth that of rimu. Something like 15 million superficial feet of timber may have been imported during the year, but, the accounts not being kept in one unit, the exact amount cannot be ascertained. Government sawmilling is to be commenced in one of the State kauri forests. . ;

A report on the demarcation and management of the Waipoua Kauri Forest by Mr. (now Sir) D. E. Hutchins was published during the year. The author has had a long experience of this class of forest, and maintains that it can easily be worked and much improved by ordinary forest methods. He indicated at the last annual meeting of the Forestry League that something like £85,000 yearly is being lost in postponing the working and rejuvenation of this forest, which is full of overmature timber. There is also a staff occupied at present only on police work, which is costing some £575 per year. When the forest is worked and developed this police work will become nearly automatic and costless.

The useful distribution of forest-trees and seeds at cost price was continued, 420,412 young trees and a small quantity of seed being sold to farmers and local bodies. The issue of rooted plants in trays is being largely adopted. It much reduces the tree-planter’s risks.

A burning question during the year has been the increased limitation of the export of white-pine timber. Measures were taken through the Board of Trade to limit the export of this timber to 40 per cent.. of the total production. Strong representations to both increase and decrease this limit were received. The real position, as to whether in any given forest or group of forests it is more advantageous to work off the old timber and put a timber-increment on the forest, or to keep the forest unworked like gold in a stocking, an idle capital but a necessary reserve —the exact economic position in any given forest —cannot be ascertained until the Forestry 'Department is much stronger than at .present. In. the meantime the cautious policy of restricting export seems to be obviously the wiser . one. : ,

Some pertinent observations are made on the rate of growth of native trees. The initiation of the great work of interplanting seedlings in the native forest to grow up as standards and improve the stocking is also recorded.

The report, which may be regarded as historical as the first of a series, is submitted by Mr. E. Phillips Turner, for a number of years connected with the Forestry Branch of the Lands Department and now Secretary of the Forestry Department. It shows a notable advance in New, Zealand forestry, and comes as a happy augury for the successful work of the technically trained Director of Forestry, Captain L. M. Ellis, who arrives this month from overseas to take up his appointment. ’