Bay of Plenty Beacon Published Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. MONDAY, MARCH 31, 1947 MENACE OF EROSION

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 11, Issue 12, 31 March 1947, Page 4

Bay of Plenty Beacon Published Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. MONDAY, MARCH 31, 1947 MENACE OF EROSION

Basketball Club Dance

“Woon”

We would like to draw attention to the Grand Basketball Dance which is being held on Tuesday, Ist April in the Thornton Hall. A free bus will be leaving the Rock at 8 p.m. via Paroa. There will be foxtrots galore, novelties and refreshments, also excellent floor and supper. The ladies are working hard to make this dance a success in every way, so come one, come all, to the Thornton Hall tomorrow night and help the newly formed Basketball Club. This night will live in your memory. P.B.A.

LIFE for the most is such a hurried thing today, and its interests so complex, that evident facts, such as that grass is green, that rain causes floods, if observed at all, are hardly given a thought. For life goes pleasantly on, and legislators have been appointed to do all the necessary thinking to keep it so! Indifference is thus engendered, and it is usually not until the dire effects of calamity of nature which overtakes a district are observed and perhaps felt, that indignation displaces indifference and the necessity for greater thought for the future is clearly seen. It is principally for those who have little time or inclination to read long articles or a scientific symposium that the following facts have been marshalled. Life depends absolutely upon the top layer, and the top layer only, of the earth’s surfacesoil. Remove that, and desert conditions result; nothing can grow, nothing live. It has been estimated that one inch of top soil was laid down every 500 years—in some places it took 1000 years. Yet water and wind can take in a single day all the top soil from land which fire or mechanical process has first laid bare! The natural vegetation, comprising trees hundreds of years old, tussock and other native grasses, protected and fed the soil. When the rain descended, its damage as floods was minimised, these protective features of nature retaining and detaining it. Birds nested in the forest and in turn protected the trees from the ravages of insects. Nature kept its equilibrium until Man, to whom the beautiful green land was given as a trust for all time, applied the fire stick, the axe, the saw, and the gun! Forests were fired' and cut, birds in their millions were destroyed, and land was laid bare, and floods swept away the precious top soil and buried it in the ocean. Have you time for just a few of many instances? Then read on! Three billion tons of solid material, washed out of the fields and pastures of America every year by water erosion, contain forty million tons of prosphorus, potassium and nitrogen. To haul this incomprehensible bulk of rich soil would require a train of freight trucks 475,000 miles long—enough to girdle this planet at the equator nineteen times! Approximately 400 million tons of solid earth are annually dumped into the Gulf of Mexico by the Mississippi River alone—the greater part of it super soil, richer than that of the Nile! Farms in America in what is known as the “Dust Bowl”—Western Oklahoma, Western Kansas, Eastern Colorado, parts of Texas and Wyoming—blew clear out to the Atlantic Ocean 2000 miles away. On a single day 300 million tons of rich soil were lifted from the Great Plains, never to return. Birds are the chief enemies of insects, and without their protection, plant and animal life are thrown out of balance, while life for man speedily becomes unendurable. Yet listen! The last Passenger Pigeon, the most abundant and most beautiful of all American game birds, died in the Cincinnati Zoo in 1914. Towards the end a single season’s slaughter in Michigan alone 'accounted for five millions of these unfortunate creatures! And what of New Zealand? We have the example of these other countries to guide and warn us, but on we go, gaily throwing cigarette butts and matches along the bush-lined roads, firing natural cover, hacking down trees from mountain sides and hill tops and ruining for ever a natural beauty with no compensating result whatever, dissipating a capital fund, of the interest of which we are wickedly or carelessly depriving posterity—the only effect the ruination of the hillside and the plains below! For the most part these areas are not replanted, but we spend thousands in straightening watercourses to give the floods which now follow quicker run to sea with their valuable cargoes of life-giving soil! New Zealanders, awake! It is not too late to save what remains and possibly to rehabilitate much that has been despoiled. Europe has learned the lesson, and Denmark, much in the news today, has now twice as many forest trees as she had 75 years ago; Sweden began to preserve her forests in 1600, and adopts a wise policy of cutting and replanting; while in Asia, Japan over 50 years ago initiated an erosion-pre-vention policy with results that are the joy of all who visit that land. And America is not asleep! The State must have the co-operation of the people, and landowners especially must be prepared to help—themselves. It will be costly, but, as has been wisely remarked, further delay will be more so.

Although intensely amusing to visitors having their first experience of it, the bidding at a wool sale is a deadly serious affair to the buyers and auctioneers. At a recent Auckland auction, however, many round the rostrum could not help smiling at the marked contrast between the deep-toned bark of the Continental operator and the high-pitched ejaculations of most of the buyers, There was some difficulty for a moment in interpreting one of his bids, which sounded like “woon.” It was evidently a compromise between the English “one” and the French “un.”