DESTRUCTION OF FORESTS.

Feilding Star, Volume XVIII, Issue 238, 10 April 1897, Page 2

DESTRUCTION OF FORESTS.

When Sir Julius Yogel was Premier of this colony he made a bold attempt to preserve from destruction a portion of our native forests, {succeeding Ministers have since allowed the scheme inaugurated by Sir Julius to be forgotten, not, perhaps, because they did not recognise its advantages, but because Sir Julius was its author. Townspeople, whu haye little, if any, knowledge on the question are indifferent^ but settlers in the country districts enn see for themselves the evils which are following the reckless destruction of our forest trees which has gone on for nearly twenty-rive years on this coast. Other new countries recently settled have been equally guilty and in this connection the Weekly Chronicle of California made the following trenchant remarks on the wanton destruction of forests in tbe United States. " The president of the Wisconsin State Forestry Association is of opinion that it is time to call a halt in the disposal of public wooded lands to private parties. Pennsylvania was once the best timbered of Eastern States. The land was sold, and the timber is gone. Indiana once had magnificent forests of black walnut aud white wood.

Tbey, too, are gone. A portion of these forests might have been reserved, dealt' with under an intelligent system of forestry, and now been a source of revenue to the state. The Dewer states, which twenty-five years since were supposed to have ' inexhaustible' areas of forests, are now approaching the conditions of the extreme eastern states. Here, in California, we are now said to have ' inexhaustible ' forests. We have nothing of the kind. The influx of half the population wbich our agricultural lands could support would create a demand for lumber which would make it cheaper to import lumber from Canada at a duty of 2dol, a thousand than to haul what would remain of our home supply from the rough and difficult places where it could only be found. Twenty-five years of such a population as California could otherwise support would make a sale for structural iron for the building of farmhouses, and long before that time our experiment stations would have dealt with the systematic planting of bamboo for tbe construction of houses of the cheaper sort. Our timber supplies seem inexhaustible only because we have a small population to be housed. Inj less than a brief century we shall be m the condition of Massachusetts and and Pennsylvania. And where will our lumber come from then 1 We have some duties to posterity." Every word of this indictment applies with equal force to New Zealand. It i.s not too much to say that in the several counties which surround Feilding after a lapse of another five years, nearly every foot of building timber and evrry cord of firewood required will have to be brought from places at a distance, at a cost impossible now to estimate, unless some of the owners of forest lands reserve portions for future use.