STATE FORESTS.

Franklin Times, Volume 9, Issue 686, 22 November 1921, Page 3

STATE FORESTS.

EXTENSIVE FIRE LOSSES. NEED FOR PRECAUTION. Any administrator who proposed to effect economies by dispensing with fire brigades would get himself into trouble. He might even be asked to show cause why he should not be interned in a mental hospital. A policy exactly parallel to the abolition of fire brigades is being adopted by the Government,, however, in regard to the protection of forests fjrom destruction by fire, or rather the almoS|t total absence of provision for this protection. According to the Director of Forestry (Captain Ellis) in his annual report, we)l pvgr fifty thousand acres of State woodland wen,t up in smoke last year, and he adds that the Ipss under this head may be estimated conservatively at £1,000,000 per year. “The whole question,” he says, “may be summed up in. a few words : The residual forests must be saved from destruction by fire by vigilant and* continuous control, or in a very few years there will be no merchantable timbers forests or young forests for the generations to come.” In view of .this emphatically worded warning and the facts on which it is based, it is somewhat staggering to find that under the current estimate of the Forestry Department the salaries payable in respect of fire fighting and prevention in the indigenious forests amount to about £336 a yean Here, as in other countries which have passed through a similar experience, it will no doubt prove very difficult to secure recognition of the practical importance of forest fire-prevention and ,the application of adequate resources for this purpose. lit adds to Jthe difficulty that early results of an organised policy of fii'e-prevention are apt to be disappointing. In countries where a sound forest policy is of long standing, loss by fire is ‘reduced 1 to a very small percentage at a trifling cost per acre per annum, but these cenditions cannot, of course, be attained in a year or two. This does not alter the fact jthat the folly of allowing destructive fires to sweep unchecked through its remaining forests is one this country can ill afford, Buildings, if (they are burnt, can be replaced at something like their original cost, A forest once destroyed, cannot oe replaced except at virtually prohibitive cost,