Mountain Lands Institute Plans

Press, Issue 31095, 25 June 1966, Page 8

Mountain Lands Institute Plans

The revegetation of badly-eroded or depleted areas, the impact of insects in the high country, the collection of information about high country development, and the conduct of short courses for small groups of runholders are some of the things which the Tussock Grasslands and Mountain Lands Institute has under consideration.

Addressing the annual conference of high country subsections of Federated Farmers at Timaru this week the chairman of the institute’s management committee, Mr D. McLeod, said that the institute was still in a very formative period. A great many runholders had made suggestions as to the line of work that the institute should follow but often it had neither the resources nor staff to do this work.

i Mr McLeod said that Mr G. A. Dunbar was taking charge , of experiments to see if completely depleted country ' could be made to grow plants, . and of course the interest was in what plants would grow on I these sites. Runholders, he i said, might be surprised to | know that there had been (some exceptionally successful | experiments based on the I amount of growth that had rej suited from putting grassseed on eroded land with superphosphate. A sole of grass had been obtained. i Frost lift could interfere with ! the progress made but it was pleasing to see that some plants were giving what looked to be remarkable results.

There was also a feeling, Mr McLeod said, that insects were playing a bigger part in the high country and preventing the revegetation of the country to a greater degree than had been thought. A worker under institute spon- | sorship had trapped and ' studied insect populations in the high country and had reI corded some 1200 insects, some of which had not been recorded before. It was the view of Mr J. M. Kelsey, of the Entomology Division, that if grasshoppers ate as much in the high country as elsewhere they could stop regrowth of vegetation in the high country. Thus it was intended to appoint an entomologist to the staff and applications had already been called for this post. Mr McLeod said it was a field that was, as yet, com- • pletely untouched. The institute, he said, was anxious that it should he the best-informed authority on

all matters relating to the high country. It has been suggested that institute staff should collect information from all high country runs in the area in which it was concerned. This information would include how high country W’as being developed, costs and results of development This sort of information, it was intended, should be available to all those concerned with the tussock grasslands. It was hoped that the officer doing this work would be given financial information, which would be confidential to the officer who collected it.

This was a proposal for extension of knowledge. Mr McLeod said that Mr J. G. Hughes, the institute’s management officer, felt that a useful service might be performed by getting together small numbers of runholders for short courses, partly held at Lincoln and partly in the field. It had been suggested that such a course might be attended by about 12 persons and last for five days. The institute, Mr McLeod, said was mainly financed by the Soil Conservation and Rivers Control Council and it had therefore to pay a lot of attention to land use in relation to soil conservation. The Catchment Boards’ Association was not at present directly represented on the institute’s management committee and the catchment boards felt that they were not sufficiently aware of what was going on in the institute, so there had been a recommendation that a representative of the Catchment Boards’ Association should be appointed to the institute. Answering questions, Mr McLeod said it had been thought that the institute might have been able to get an entomologist seconded from the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research to make the entomological studies mentioned, but they had not had a man to spare and so the institute had to get one for itself.

Dr. S. N. Adams, director of the institute, said that

there was a series of 10 experiments on the subject of revegetation from Black Birch in the north to the Takatimus in Southland. Mr I. Wardell said he felt that there was a crying need for an “animal man” to show runholders how best to utilise their feed. They had had no help whatsoever in this direction. In Australia, he said, a wonderful job had been done by Morley. There 36,000 sheep were being run on 12.000 acres on tussocks that “we would turn our noses up at.” This was being done at 2500 to 3000 ft under a 26in rainfall with a drought every five years and a bad drought every seven years. Mr McLeod said that management and utilisation was one of the acute problems. The institute was busy collecting and disseminating information and encouraging people to experiment. Over the centuries, Mr McLeod said, it had been the farmer, however, who had had to make the final decision as to what to do. What could be done was to introduce him to most modern thought and to enable him to talk it over with the workers concerned.