A LESSON FROM JAVA.

Hokitika Guardian, 21 January 1928, Page 4

A LESSON FROM JAVA.

A -New Zealander, writing from Java lately, described the care taken by the Dutch Government to replace the valuable teak -forests. Regular replanting is a State activity ; .Java will always have teak. With this place a recent statement from the west coast of North America, stating that “there is no danger of the supply of Douglas fir and western hemlock ever becoming exhausted.’’

Contrast this testimony to scientific forestry in other lands, with the official forest policy in New Zealand. Can it be said that New Zealand will always have kauri or totara or rimu or kahikatea? Java and other forested lands wisely prefer their own indigenous timber to foreign trees, and carry out a programme that ensures their permanent preservation, a perpetual recurring crop. Here, apparently, we are to see our native timbers disappear, to give place to pines and firs and spruce from America. Norway, Corsica, from anywhere in fact, outside New Zealand. Certain forest reserves have been made, hut as experience has shown, no reserve can he considered safe; -and nothing is done, to replant native timbers.

It is an excellent thing to plant our waste lands with quickly-growing exotics; but side by side with this Jhere should he equally large areas devoted to reafforestation, with the indigenous timbers 'that are more valuable than any exotics. Our New Zealand Forestry League has a big field of usefulness before it hero, in carrying out a vigorous crusade for the perpetuation of timber supplies from ' the native forests.