The Feilding Star. Oroua & Kiwitea Counties Gazette. Published Daily. FRIDAY, AUGUST 6, 1897. THE DESTRUCTION OF FORESTS.

Feilding Star, Volume XIX, Issue 32, 6 August 1897, Page 2

The Feilding Star. Oroua & Kiwitea Counties Gazette. Published Daily. FRIDAY, AUGUST 6, 1897. THE DESTRUCTION OF FORESTS.

o When Sir Julius Yogel advocated the conservation of the New Zealand forests, he showed greater foresight than those who opposed the admirable scheme he formulated for that purpose. He fully recognised that rhe prosperity of a country directly and indirectly depends upon the preservation or renewal of its forest trees. We quite recognise that new country, like tbis West Coast, must have much of the forest land cleared for settlement, but we also recognise that large reserves should have been made on the Ruahine and Tararua ranges. As to what has happened in this connection in older countries a writer in the Contemporary Reviow points out:— That more than one-half of the ancient , Roman Empire ia now either deserted by civilised man, or greatly reduced in productiveness and population, owing to the destruction of forests, the drying np of springs which actually followed, ' and the desolation arising from these two causes. The same writer remarks upon the factß that where there was blue water in the Caspian twenty years ago there are now only marshes of drifting sand ; the volume of water in the Oder and the Elbe has been steadily decreasing for upwards of a ' century; the Volga is gradually ' drying up, and the surface of , LakeArel is sinking year by year. ( In all these cases the shrinkage is traceable to the denudation of the ' regions in which the rivers or the j affluents of the lakes take their rise. | Not only so, but the disforesting of , mountain ranges, among which streams , have their source, is productive ot i disastrous inundations. The winter J 1 rain*, no longer conducted tbteugb a •-<

layer of permeable humus, to feed a number of subterranean springs, flow in torrents down the hard impenetrable surface of the slopes into the 1 valleys, carrying with them the alluvium they find there, thus filling the < beds of the rivers and increasing their 1 overflow, and the result is such calamities as periodically devastate the banks ] of the Rhone and the Loire in France, ' of the Po in Italy, of the Segura in Spain and of the Theiss in Hungary. \ The latter observations apply with j direct force to this colony, where, < through the denudation of the forest- • clad hills, fertile tracts of country are ' subjected to frequent ruinous floods and are in danger of becoming a howl- i ling wilderness of shingle and swamp. We need only instance the disastrous | floods which took place last Easter when large areas in Hawke's Bay, and on this coast, were devastated and ruined. We hope that the work bogun by Sir Julius Vo^el will again be taken up by the Government and large reserves made while there yet remains sufficient forests.