Evils of Deforestation.

Kaikoura Star, Volume XXIV, Issue 13, 16 February 1904, Page 6

Evils of Deforestation.

(By

Omihi.)]

Interested in a paragraph that appeared in the Star (29th ulto.) which speaks of the encroachment of the Sahara Desert towards the South as fairly attributable to the denudation of the forests, it may not. be amiss to mention the result of the writer’s observation during wide travel in Australia some years ago. There, illimitable areas are denuded of the timber by “ ringbarking” or “ sap-ringing”—i.e., a strip of bark six or ten inches wide is removed from the tree trunk all round, or else a chip is taken out. In the former case the tree dies in about twelve months, in the latter within a few weeks. Many of the districts are traversed by creeks, or billabongs, as they are called, and a glance will satisfy the observer that in years past, prior to the destruction of the bush, very many of these billabongs carried water all the year round, and occasionally' in great volume. Now they are either a chain of water-holes or tolerably dry. Again, had the terrible, protracted droughts which nowadays devastate. the Colonies existed always it is very questionable if the magnificent forests would ever have originated. When the mallee country was about to be settled upon, a correspondent of the London “Times” then On a visit to Australia, predicted that it would become the “ granary of Australia.” This the present writer combated in the columns of the “Otago Witness,” basing , his belief on the fact that immediately on the mallee scrub being cleared droughts would ensue and crops fail. The result proved it. The country is a desert, and it is very doubtful if one settler now remains. If it wasn’t for the salt bush on the Old Man and One Tree Plains lying between the Murrumbidgee and Lachlan Rivers no stock could be depastured thereon—they have no timber to attract or retain moisture and would be valueless sterile wastes. I have seen rain storms passing within a few miles, hugging the belts of forest cohering the river deltas, and avoiding the open country, which remained perfectly dry. One paddock-would be covered in luxuriant pasture, the adjacent a barren desert.

The people now recognise the culpable laxity in permitting the deforestation of those areas. Large tracts of country known as the back-blocks without any restriction for a nominal rent.. Syndicates, or land-jobbers, acquired these—swept off the timber by any means the quickest, erected dams in the billabongs, and enclosed the runs by bush, zigzag, dog-leg or chock and log fences —stocked them, and then sold them in the capitals as improved stations at so much per head (of stock), all “ improvements ” being valued. But the destruction of the bush did not end here—the runholders, driven to straits through want of pasture, cut down all trees which constituted food, each season’s denudation lessening the supply of moisture from any source and changing the climate so materially that but for the introduction of artesian wells vast areas would now have become altogether uninhabitable.