The New Zealand Tablet. Fiat Justitia. THURSDAY, JULY 27, 1899. THE RUIN OF OUR FORESTS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXVII, Issue 30, 27 July 1899, Page 17

The New Zealand Tablet. Fiat Justitia. THURSDAY, JULY 27, 1899. THE RUIN OF OUR FORESTS.

RBOUR-DAI has come and gone, if ere and there throughout the Colony little knots of holiday-makers have been playing at, treeplanting. It is a very pretty amusement, and its net result will be the growth of sundry hundreds of various trees whose chief use will be that of adornment. All this is well — so far as it goes. But it does not go far. For, against this annual day of make-believe tree-culture, we must set the wilful and wholesale waste of our magnificent forest resources that is going on practically every day of the year's three hundred and sixty -five. Even the Vogel Treeplanting Act was bat a palliative for a mighty evil that has been long eating the heart out of the Colony's best assets. We are destroying by the square mile. We art planting by the rood. Such a process must lead to ti e sure, if gradual, deforesting of vast areas of the Colony. * * * The deforesting of the country may be viewed from two different standpoints — the commercial and the climatic. The former consideration will appeal with strong force to those who are acquainted with the magnificent national asset uhich New Zealand possesses in her forests of kauri, pine, and other commercial trees. Some idea of its value may be gathered from the following statement in a report on Forest Conservation presented to Parliament last month : * Some fifteen years ago the quantity of timber per acre in New Zealand forests was estimated at from 15,000 to 30,000 superficial feet. A well-known miller recently assured me that the labour and value of utilising and working the timber on an acre of ordinary heavy bush land in

the Rangitikei district amounts to £18.' But it is on the far more serions consideration of climatic influences that we dc sire to focus the attention of our readers. The evils of deforesting were noticed on the Continent of Europe as far back as the fourteenth century ; but the first scientific study of ihe subject was the work of a French engineer named Fabre, who wrote in 1797. Since that time silviculture has received a marked degree of attention in France. In fact, the works of Demontzey, Lapparent, Blauqui, and others had a marked effect upon the legislation passed in l»60, 1864, and at later dates, to arrest the ruin which the reckless deforesting of other times has caused over wide areas in the South of France.

The de/oresting of a country exposes its surface to the full fury of the action of what Lapparent calls 'the earth's external dynamics.' Chief of these are air and water. The air exercises a powerful effect on precipitation ; and condensation, as is well known, is much greater in a mountainous country like New Zealand than in countries of a lower and more uniform level. The worst effects, and the most difficult to regulate, are those produced by water. Forests ensure the gradual distribution of the rainfall by arresting the speed of the rills which go to form the rivulets, which in turn become torrents and swoop furiously down to swell the flooded river that spreads devastation over the lowlying lands. Besides the rapid descent of storm waters, the deforesting of a country leads to the degratation of the surface of the mountains, the impoverishment of the higher lands, the deposit of great quantities of detritus in the valleys, the silting up of the lower reaches of rivers, the occasional drying up of springs at the sources of streams, and the destruction of much scenic beauty — in addition to the injury done to the economic and domestic requirements of the people.

There is one urgent danger in connection with the present system of indiscriminate forest-destruction which is more to be dreaded than the direct loss of the forests themselves. It is the loss of rich agricultural regions of the Colony through the devastating floods that rush down from the naked mountains, bringing with them vast quantities of sand, gravel, etc., to be spread over the lowlands. The devastation wrought by the Northern rivers of New South Wales furnish examples in point. Oiher and worse examples are to be met with in abundance in Spain, Sicily, Greece, North Africa, and parts of Italy. A tour of inspection by our legislators through those treeless regions would speedily lead to some such system of forest conservation and reforesting as has saved the commercial timbers of Norway and Sweden from reckless and irresponsible destruction. A province of Tuin&ie, that in the old Roman days was one of the richest granaries of the empire, now yields a scanty support for a sparse and semi-barbarous population. In the olden days the hills were clothed with timber. They are treeless now And that is just what has made all the difference.

In the days of the Romans the Guadalhorce, near Malaga, in Spain, was a busy river, navigable as far as Cartana. It is now at times a rocky river-bed with a sickly streamlet of water, at times a roaring torrent that spreads wreck and rnin all along its track. The chaoge from the deep and tranquil Guadalhorce of old to that of to-day is ihe result of the reckless destruction of the splendid chestnut forests which for ages adorned and protected the hills that lie around Malaga. Spa n, and especially its eastern provinces — as we have personally seen — lurnish an objectlesson in the benefits of forestry which our legislators would do well to study. A Freemason Government — after having confiscated the Church property of the country — sold for a tr.fle the noble forests that clothed its hills and sheltered its plains. The sacrifice only satisfied for a time the demands of a penniless exchequer. But the country that destroyed its forests paid dire tribute in floods. So late as last year five treeless provinces — Alicante, Murcia, Valencia, Barcelona, and Tarragona — were swept and scourged by inundations which took rank as a great national calamity. Cottages, vineyards, rich farm lands, once prosperous aldms s vn ere ruined and incalculable loss was inflicted over a vast area. As far back as 1776 the deforesting of the Department uf Basses Aipes (France) had led to great devastation by the rush of storm-waters from the mountains. The chief

damage was done in the neighbourhood of Barcelonette. The agricultural lands of the Department were only partially saved by the construction of enormous and costly defensive •works and the systematic re-planting of trees, grass, etc. 'J he work is still going toilsomely on. There is a melancholy abundance of such-like examples of the destructive effects of the policy of using axe and fire on a vast and reckless scale, and neglecting to make adequate provision for conservation and re-planting. The detailed report presented last month by the Wellington Land Board to the Government on the subject of forest conservation shows how relatively little has been done in the matter over a great part of the North Island. The rest of the Colony is probably in no better case. Government needs waking up on the matter. An American authority upon the subject sayg — a nd his words apply with equal force to New Zealand — that ' the care of the national forests is a provis on for future generations, for the permanence over vast areas of our country of the great industries of agriculture and mining, upon which the prosperity of the country ultimately depends. A good Forest Administration would soon support itself, but it should be organised in the interests of the whole country, no matter what it costs.'