RESOURCES OF TIMBER

Press, Volume LXXXII, Issue 24896, 8 June 1946, Page 8

RESOURCES OF TIMBER

SURVEY BEING MADE (P.A.) WELLINGTON, June 7. Long delayed by the war, a comprehensive survey of New Zealand’s umber resources is now being made by the State Forest Service. The work u expected to take five years. The survey will give / basic data needed for the scientific management cf the country’s indigenous forests; it will help in determining the best use of available resources; will show which forests must be left untouched as a protection against erosion, and how soon there should be a -change from the use of native to exotic timbers for building and other purposes. The survey is being organised by Mr A. P. Thomson, who served during the war with the forestry group of the New Zealand Engineers. In England, he spent a year with the Home-grown Timber Production Department of the British Ministry of Supply, assisting to make a rapid estimate of the country'i timber resources, and was later for six months in the United States studying modern methods of large scale forest survey work. Mr Thomson said that the work would be simplified by aerial -photography covering all forests in the country. From the photograph!, accurate figures for areas could be obtained, proportions of timber types ascertained, and scale maps prepared.