"PLANT A TREE"

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2544, 19 August 1915, Page 6

"PLANT A TREE"

EXHAUSTION OF TIMBER. SUPPLIES IN SIGHT. A noto of warning as to the need for providing for our future timber supplies was raised by Mr. James Mackenzie, Under-Secretary for Lands, in his annual report on our afforestation operations. "In connection with our afforestation operations," he states, "I must hero point out that our present supplies of native timber will bo exhausted in about thirty years' time, and as a very small proportion of the area now_ planted will then be ready for conversion (as a matter of fact, the whole area planted up to the present would not keep the country supplied for two years), we shall be for some : years dependent on foreign supplies. To shorten tho period of such an undesirable stato of affairs it will ho necessary to increase very much our present operations. It is estimated that tho probable annual consumption will then be about 720,000,000 feet, and to producc this amount wo should plant 14,000 acres annually until a total of 700,000 acres of forest is reached. We cannot, of course (for financial reasons), at onco increaso our operations to this extent, but we should gradually work .up , to, this. . ' "It must bo pointed .out that there is only sufficient land at the present plantations (excepting Kaingaroa Plantation, whero there is enough for some years ahead) for about another year's operations; and it is now highly important that suitable areas of Crown or other lands of poor farming value bo set apart for future planting operations. This has been arranged for ill connection with spmo pastoral runs in • the neighbourhood of the Mackenzie country, the leases of which had expired; and arrangements aro also being made for the setting-apart of about 24,000 acre's of gum lands in the Kaipara district with .navigable water-frontage. I havo also submitted to you a scheme for the setting-aside of an area of about 258,000 acres on the pumice plateau between p.otorua and Taupo, comprising most of the Kaingaroa Plains, and adjoining the' lands we are now operating on there. It is not quite intended that lands so set apart should be locked up, but it is advisable : they' ho mado Teserves. In some instances, where suitable, those portions not likely to be required within ilip nest few . years could, however, be leased on short terms for grazing purposes, and they could be resumed for planting as occasion required. In all instances lands it is prcposed to reserve for this, purpose nre of very low farming value; but. in any case, the production of millingtimber is no less important than the production of farm-produce, and it is an industry which tho Stato alone can in this counry engage in to any large extent, as few farmers could bo found who would ho willing to plant a crop which takes from forty to sixty vears to mature, and on which the profit is bo small and the risk so great. . "A start has been made with the proposed scheme of Stato assistance in tree-planting by fanners, and there are now about 1(10,000 trees available for this purpose in the different nurseries. This method of encouraging tree-planfc-in» has been for somo years in oceration in 'Canada, South' Africa, and tho different Australian States, and has protect most satisfactory."