FORESTRY WORK

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 3, 5 January 1939, Page 8

FORESTRY WORK

EXPENDITURE IN ' N.S.W.

LARGE SCALE OPERATIONS

(From "The Post's" Representative.)

SYDNEY, December 30.

In addition i? the expenditure ofmore than half the forest revenues on actual afforestation and reafforestation and excluding the salaries of officers, the New South Wales Department of Forests has spent more than £800,000 on forest work in the last five years. More than 1000 men are employed on forest work, and expenditure at the rate of £15,000 a month is proceeding. The finance is being provided direct from the Treasury.

These facts were given by the Minister of Forests, Mr. Vincent, in a letter to the Farmers' and Settlers' Association, replying "to resolutions adopted at the association's recent annual conference.

One resolution urged the Government "to engage actively on a large scale of reafforestation in suitable districts." To this, the Minister replied that the Government had been actively engaged on a fairly large scale of reafforestation in suitable districts for the last five years. In addition to embarking on an extensive and intensivemanagement of various areas, many hundreds /of miles of roads had been constructed and firebreaks established. Look-out towers had been placed on hills commanding views of forest areas, and these were connected by telephone with the forest and general systems, so that fires might be located as soon as they started and fire-fighting equipment might: be concentrated at the seat of the outbreak at once. FARMERS NEED EDUCATING. - In" reply, td a request by the,confers ence that "the Government should extend forestry work in dry areas with a view to the prevention of soil erosion," the Minister replied that the native flora in the dry inland areas of New South Wales had been sadly depleted from various causes in the past, and hjs recent visit to the west was sufficient to convince him that as a result of the destruction of timber, erosion in. one of its worst forms was already in existence. In the central division of the State' there was still an agitation by some of the farming communities for the alienation of the few remaining cypress pine reserves, and he had to resist .this constantly.

"I would welcome the co-operation of your organisation hi educating the rural community to the need not only for the retention of the, • reserves that remain but also for the expansion of the timbered areas by, reafforestation," Mr. Vincent wrote. ?. "The Forestry Commission has been able to do something in the cypress pineNareas during the last five years, and a considerable sum has been spent there, but I recognise only too well that a much more extended effort is necessary. I hope that under the new Soil Conservation Act I will be.able to place foresters at strategic areas in the western division to carry out experi.ments there and see whether there cannot be a restoration of part of. the abundant timber that undoubtedly at one time existed." "