RUIN OF THE GARDEN OF EDEN

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 5, Issue 14, 9 February 1942, Page 4

RUIN OF THE GARDEN OF EDEN

A CONTRIBUTOR to "Forest and Bird" gives a forcible reminder that "God's Own Country" (the term which Richard Seel don often applied to New Zealand) may suffer the same fate as the Garden of Eden unless the people strive strenuously to safeguard their soil from the demon of erosion. Tjie writer quotes some very startling statements of Dr. W. C. Lowdermilk, assistant chief of the United States Soil Conservation Service, who had been investigating the cause of the disappearance of past civilisations in. Libya, Egypt and Iran. "Dr Lowdermilk found in the dry canals of the Garden of Eden (the Tigris-Euphrates country now called Irak) the silent record of man's failure to adapt himself," the reviewer states. "Man had not always failed to adapt. Man had indeed created in this level land of the two great river a veritable Garden of Eden, a marvel of irrigation; but the time came when the life-giving water flowed no longer over the level lands, because the irrigation canals were blocked. As in scores of-New Zealand rivers, the force of water in the hills carried d,own silt which, when the silt reached the plains,, the water no longer had the force to move further. Water will always pile up eroded matter in its own level channels if, in its upland courses, erosion has been allowed to begin. The remedy lies in preventing the upland erosion,, not in removing the lowland silt from the river-beds and canals. The key to the prevention of upland erosion is to protect the vegetable covering from the treeffiller, the plough, and browsing and grazing animals."