AFFORESTATION

Hokitika Guardian, 7 February 1930, Page 7

AFFORESTATION

RE-COVERING DENUDED

AREAS.

RESEARCH ON WEST COAST

There aro thousands of aerps of land in New Zealand which will never bear a more profitable crop than the virgin native forest with which Nature first clothed them. The State Forest Service, knowing this, and realising that, years ago, much bush was destroyed which ought never to have been touched is hard at work trying to make timber trees grow again on these areas. But native forest, like most things of beauty, is not raised to maturity in a day and the task of the State Service is to discover how to regenerate the forest on these areas most economically and for the greatest commercial utility.

To this end research is necessary, and some of the most valuable of it is being prosecuted at the Government experimental station, of 7COO acres, at Ilium, seven miles from Hokitika.

Here, side by side, are being carried out two distinct types of experiments. Exotics, much faster growing trees than the New Zealand natives, may supply the solution of the afforestation problem in this country, and the officers of the State Forest Service are bending their energies towards discovering how far exotics are suitable to our .forest conditions and what varieties may be suited to take the place of the denuded native bush. The Canterbury College School of Forestry, chiefly Mr C. E. Foweraker, lecturer in charge of the School, and Mr F. E. Hutchinson, lecturer \in forest utilisation, are approaching the problem of re-afforestation from the other angje and their research is concerned with the regeneration of the native rimu forest.

EXOTIC CONIFERS. Summing up the work as far as it had gone (the station has been in existence for some years), Mr Foweraker explained on Tuesday to a Christchurch pressman, that 'the areal on which the experiments’ were being carried out had nearly all been milled some thirty years ago, and a lot of it burnt. A considerable area had been planted in exotics—chiefly conifers. There were the various pines, cypresses, and cedars, redwoods. Japanese cedars, and a few gums and poplars. It was too early yet to come to any conclusion, but they seemed to adapt themselves surprisingly well to New Zealand conditions. Especially was this true of the red cedar. The trees were all established in sample plots, and measurements were made periodically. The seedlings were raised in the Forest Service nurseries.

REGENERATION OF RIMU. ; Then there was the work of rimu regeneration, in which lie and Mr Hutchinson wore chiefly interested. In this a good deal of work had already been done. Their method was to lay down sample plots, which varied in size up to an acre. They were established in portions of the forest in different stages of development. Then they proceeded to measure the height and diameter of the trees and record it. The initial measurement was made in the summer of 1927-28, and the next big survey would take place in 1933. Thus, over a period of five years, they expected to have some accurate and valuable data on which to work.

“As you can imagine there is a lot of work in this,” commented Mr Foweraker, who with Mir Hutchinson, has just returned from the station. There has been a lot of guesswork about this question in the past, but the only sure way is to obtain a quantitative analysis over a period of years under actual forept conditions. Regeneration proceeds differently in the different areas. For example, in virgin forests the trees fall down and are supplanted, while, in hush that is milled, they are cut down; and then there is the efleet of burning logged areas. In these different kinds of forest we have our experimental plots established and, in n few years, wfe hope to have some very significant information as to how far New Zealand will be able, successfully and economically to regenerate her native rimu forests.