Money in Timber.

Hokitika Guardian, 4 May 1922, Page 1

Money in Timber.

A PROFITABLE investment. WELLINGTON, May 2. A wide tour of the North Island has just Ijeen concluded by one of the experts of the State Forestry Department, Mr P. M. Page, forest extension officer at Rotorua. In the course of his travels Mr Page delivered many addresses on the conservation of tho country’s timbers to farmers, local bodies, and in the schools, stressing tho need for tree planting and tho cultivation of present growths. Mr Page found that a good deal of interest was being displayed in treo planting work both by public bodies and private individuals. The Wliangarei Harbour Board is inaugurating a tree-planting scheme this season, to which it intends to devote between thirty and forty acres, and the local borough council is also interesting itself, but for the present is held up through financial difficulty. In the same district private companies nre taking up tho planting of pin us .insignia, which is specially suitable for fruit cases, and of ©ucalypts, valuable in tho .manufacure of power transmission poles, which are in increasing demand. Tho latter, explained Mr Page to a, “ Times” reporter on Saturday, was probably oue of the most profitable investments nowadays, for more /and more difficulty is being experienced every year in obtaing poles from Australia, and the quality of the imported polo is deteriorating. The poles cost at the present time about 68s landed at Auckland, and he. estimated that euealypts planted now would in twenty or thirty years yield. 400 poles to th© acre. Planting would cost alront £lO to the acre, and in a ■few years the income derived would he about £1,200 per acre. There was no doubt that they could be successfully grown. In Rotorua, the climate of which was really too severe for euealypts, they were thriving well.