FOREST PROTECTION

Hokitika Guardian, 19 September 1929, Page 2

FOREST PROTECTION

ARTICLE n. - • (Contributed.) In a previous, article published in these columns were briefly reviewed the policy of the earlier Governments with regard to the control of our forests and the animals introduced therein, and in this concluding article wo bring that review down to the present time. Following its alarming report on “Deer in New Zealand’’ the State Forest Service after relating instances of the effect of deer in settled and forest areas, states that the Departments of Agriculture, Tourists and Forest Service were conferring with the various Acclimatisation Societies with a view to formulating a more rigorous policy with regard to deer control. Again in 1924 it reported that various Government Departments had conferred with the Acclimatisation Societies pnd that the Departments of Lands and Agriculture were consulted as to the areas to lie demarcated for the li-fting of protection, these areas being later approved 'by the Minister of Internal Affairs and the protection removed. In 1925 the situation apparently was little eased and we read—

“CONTROL OF WILD LIFE OF THE DOMINION." “The control of the wild life of the Dominion, such as deer and pigs and other vermin inhabiting forests, at the present time is regulated by many bodies. Apparently no co-ordination prevails, v-ith the result that the deer, as a vermin, is becoming moat serious. The Forest Service, as the competent authority controlling" the forests of this country is prepared to "assume complete responsibility for the control /and regulation of wild life. The Government is therefore recommended to place this complete control in the hands of the Forest Seiwice by 1930.”

In 1926 the situation had become still more alarming and the Director advocated the removal of all protection and the payment of a bonus of 2s on all deer destroyed. In 1927 the Service had evidently given up the matter as hopeless but placed on record its. opinion that protection should be lifted', for at least three years and that during that period a bounty on. all deer killed should be paid. In 1928, as nothing had eventuated, the report contented itself with notes on bounties paid in the areas already demarcated and .with schemes for future poisoning and the attraction of deer to salt licks whereby they, would be destroyed, .What the 1929 report will say we have yet to see. Dr Cockayne prepared a molt important work on the, beech forests and in that work (Monograph on the Beech Forest in New Zealand 19) he stressed the necessity for the control of the deer herds, stating—- “ Hie New Zealand high mountain forests are the finest in the temperate zones as protection forests on account of , their undergrowth and the tliick water-bold-ing bryophyte carpet, or cushions,

of the floor, but these features can be entirely destroyed by deer, and t with this the main value of these forests is gone. Even could the deer be exterminated, after this had happened many years would elapse before restoration would be complete, or this might never come about, for erosion could easily gain . the upper hand and make such natural regeneration impossible. “Thus these priceless forests of ours are in imminent danger of being transformed into debris-fields and waste ground, and trie water which they controlled become the master pouring down the naked slopes after each rainstorm, bearing with it heavy loads of s-.one, gravel and clay, to bury the fertile arable lands below and occasion floods in the rivers. Is the protection of deer and the like to be permitted to lead to such disaster 1”

In the' “New Zealand Fishing and Shooting Gazettq,” Junie Ist, 1929, Mr Herrick gave a very interesting and instructive account of a moose hunting expedition to Dusky Sound. He states that he found many Panax trees eaten and killed by moose and that red deer were very numerous. He -found in places that the hush was eaten out completely by red deer, several hundred acres being absolutely' eaten bare, not a green blade, "of fern leaf within reach or anything green left, except tne tall Porest trees. From a distance, this busfy looks untouched, and unless it was penetrated one would not realise the damage done. Mr Herrick photographed large trees (Eleocarpus) barked up lo' lift fp=om the ground and writes “the moose are very fond of these trees, .literally hundreds of them have been killed through barking. This ealing of the bark must not be mistaken for the rubbing of their horns, or the rubbing of the red deer horns, the two actions are entirely different. In this eating business one never sees a scrap of Bark broken and left on the ground, in the rubbing the ground is strewn with shavings and barkings.” This report' is damning enough but he goes on to say “the harm the moose are doing in Dusky Sound is infinitesimal, compared to what the red deer have done and are still doing.” These .’animjals are destroying not only smaller growth trees but trees of large size and of commercial use.

We can only imagine the damage beipg done in the vast almost unexplored forests of Fiordland, a district that, is seldom visited on account of the time and expense that must be expended to hunt in country that is so inaccessible, and for the greater part, steep and unknown. We can only judge of the damage being done from the evidence of / unbiassed sportsmen such as Mr Herrick,' who after all did but enter the fringe of this large district. Our own observations in the Hum-' bol.dfc and Ailsa mountains and in the mountains between Lake Wanaka and Mount Aspiring serve to corroborate all that has been stated in tho Forestry reports and by Dir Herrick. Tho forests are interwoven with deer paths and the larger growth is rapidly disappearing. A few years ago we followed blazed • trails through the forests on tho Humfooldts and took close note of the vegetation. On a visit at the beginning of this year comparing these notes with the vegetation as it now stands we appeared to be examining .an entirely different forest and one could roam at u ill throughout almost any portion. Above the forest the subalpine scrub "lias been trampled out and bare ground shows where once*man had to l.terally scramble over the. dense growth. Damp places and margins of mountain bogs and tarns are becoming trampled quagmires and the celery pine (Phyllo'cladus alpinus) and rlb(bonwoc(d (Hoheri'a |glabra,ta) fare everywhere being barked and destroyed. From the above it will be seen that the matter is urgent as right up to the present time practically nothing has been done to combat this plague of animals.

By a notice recently gazetted the Minister of Internal Affairs: permits Acclimatisation , Societies and other authorised v persons to destroy deer but this is only the merest trifling with a most serious matter. The Societies are now spending money on deer culling and at the most they can hardly irritate the swarming hordes and they are helpless to do more. There has taken too much delay already, and not only with . the matter of deer but with all matters affecting the control of wild life and the trouble lies entirely with the overlapping Departments. There has been too much control "by a department quite unfitted to assume that control and too supinely anxious in the past to meet the desires of sporting societies. During all these years our forests have suffered through regrettable departmental overlapping and neglect and.this is shown in the necessity for conferences requiring the attendance of' officers from the Tourist, Land, Agriculture, Internail Affairs and Forest iService Departments, together with conferences with Acclimar.uation ,Societies as side issues.

The control of wild life in the past has been control in name -.nily, in fact no control at all and the forests are swarming with animals that are seen only by out-lying settlers and the more venturesome. It is a matter of extremfe urgency that the whole authority and policy for the safeguarding of our valuable forests, both milling and scenic, should be vested entirely in the one department able to undertake that control. M c are grazing a herd of animals whose numbers, though they cannot be accurately computed are immense; our forests swarm with stoats and weasels whose sponsors even are now condemning them for the damage they do to feathered life. One department only has the organisation and the necessary stern urge for the protection of its" work to undertake the whole control of natural and exotic wild life and that Department, the Forest Service, should early be banded the necessary authority so that immediate remedial steps may be taken to undo the neglect of other ■Government departments in past years. J. SCOTT THOMSON, GEO. SIMP-SON,.JR., Dunedin.

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