CASE AGAINST DEER

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 5, Issue 32, 23 March 1942, Page 6

CASE AGAINST DEER

PROTECT OUR FORESTS NOW!

EROSION WILL PREVAIL

"The New Zealand high mountain forests are the finest in the temperate zones as protection forests, on account of their undergrowth and the thick water-holding hryophyte carpet, or cushions, of the floor, but these features can be entirely destroyed by deer, and Avith this the main value of these forests is gone. Even could the deer be exterminated, after this had happened many years would elapse before restoration would be complete; or this might never come about, for erosion could easily gain the upper hand and make such natural regeneration impossible. "Thus these priceless forests of ours arc in imminent danger of being transformed into debris fields and Avaste ground, and the Avater which they controlled become the masters, pouring down the naked slopes after each rainstorm, bearing with it heaA\v loads of stone, gravel and clay to bury the fertile arable lands beloAV and occasion floods in the riAxrs. Is the protection of deer and the like to be permitted to lead to such disaster? "It seems unthinkable that any one interested in the prosperous development of New Zealand, knoAA*ing the facts, could ansAver the aboA*e question in the • —L. Cockayne in Forest and Bird.