NATIVE FORESTS

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 3183, 6 September 1917, Page 4

NATIVE FORESTS

Somb arresting facts are presented in a report on our native forests by Me. E. Phillips Turner (Inspector of Scenic Reserves), extracts from which were published in our news columns recently. Although it is well known that native milling timber is rapidly being cut _ out which can never be replaced, it is a little startling-to be informed that if milling, continues at its present rate our indigenous forests will .be cut out in a few decades. We havo evidently reached a point at which it is necessary to determine whether or not the comparatively small area of native forest remaining at disposal should be preserved or abandoned to rapid exhaustion. Some areas will, of course, be preserved in' any case as scenic reserves, but on strictly practical grounds there is a conflict of authority as to whether the exhaustion of our native milling forests should be allowed to continue at the presont rate. This appears from some observations on forestry in New Zealand made by Mr D. E. Hutchins, a high authority on forestry, and from his adveusc criticism of the conclusions reached by tho Now Zealand Forestry Commission, which reported to Parliament somo years ago. Me. Hutchins remarks that tho indigenous forest in New Zealand contains valuable timber trees, but thatthey are members of a restricted, perhaps retrograde, forest flora, with trees stated to be of so slow a growth, and of so poor a natural reproduction, that they aro of little or no use for plantation purposes. "But this, of course," he adds, 'is not to say that the forest as an organic whole should not bo preserved, as it is in South Africa .Unit it can never economically be replanted, only emphasises tho economic waste of destroying it by unskilful cuttings, instead of preserving it by 'Conservative lumbering — to use the American phrase." Criticising the report of the New Zealand Forestry Commission, Mu. Hutchins remarks:

Far worse than (he mistakes made in forcst-plautiiiß in New Zealand seems to bo the conclusion arrived at by the Commission that tho indigenous forest, economically, is not worth preserving! "It may bo stated as a broad principle," say tho commissioners, "that no forest land, except it be required for tho epecinl purpose- of ii ftliniiitic or Bccnic reserve and which is .suilablo for i'arm lund, blinuld bo permitted to roniain under forest it it can be occupied trod rwidod upon in reasonably limited areas." This thought-

less definition would exclude the [jrrater part of the cultivated forosis of Uurope where, in tho most liighly-dovolopod and industrial parts of Europe, a population six or eight times tho ]iopiilation of New Zealund set a living out of tho forest. . . .

The questions raised can be determined ouly by exports, but it is the manifest duty of the Government to institute such inquiries and obtain such advice as will enablo it to determine, while choice in the matter remains, whether or not some effort should bo made, to preserve our rap-idly-vanishing native forests.