MANAGEMENT OF FORESTS.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 4206, 12 September 1874, Page 2

MANAGEMENT OF FORESTS.

(From the Melbourne Argus.) Year by year complaints from the miners, representations from public bodies, petitions from selectors and others interested in the subject, with regard to firewood and fencing, have been increasing in number and intensity, and at length it has been determined that the great timber question is to receive more attention from the powers that be, here as well as in other countries. In 1867 a Board was appointed to inquire into and report upon the best means of securing the permanency of the State forests in Victoria. Their report was a namby-pamby affair, never presented to Parliament, and, therefore, not published; but it pointed out the necessity for incurring an annual expenditure of about £ISOO, “ with a view to the creation, maintenance, and renewal of forests of useful foreign and indigenous trees in the several reserves.” This recommendation for the expenditure of such a totally inadequate sum proved how little the Board in question could appreciate the importance of the subject. A few years after the Foreign Industries and Forests Commission collected a mass of evidence showing how serious the scarcity of timber was becoming on the goldfields ; that, in point of fact, the cost of carriage, owing to bad roads in winter and increase of distance from the available sources of supply, made all the difference between profit and loss in working several of the poorer deep leads and quartz reefs. The consumption of split timber and props is so great that every year these-have to be procured from a greater distance, and it is the same with regard to firewood for the engines, the cost of these indispensable items amounting not only to hundreds but thousands of pounds in the annual balance-sheets of some of the larger companies. According to the reports of the mining surveyors, the value of the timber used for mining purposes in 1873 was £480,691. This appears to have been taken at a low estimate, and the returns can scarcely have included all the small companies and detached parties so engaged. Firewood is also becoming very costly in some of the large towns, the quality being inferior, too, and much of what is now used in Melbourne is carted a distance of twenty miles, and brought by rail or by water twice and thrice that distance. Since the commencement of 1852 the value of the timber imported, principally for building purposes, has been over £10,000,000, while a tenth of the quantity has not been imported to New South Wales, this fact plainly showing that the home trade of the sister Colony has been better developed, for her wants, though they were' not so suddenly expanded, are nearly as great as ours. We have the same kinds of timber trees, excepting cedar, and this only to a limited extent supplies the place of the American and Baltic pine and deal wo now use so largely in our houses, to their great detriment both in regard to durability and danger from fire. All this

goes far to prove that if the timber question does not quickly receive the amount of attention its importance warrants, we —the first generation allowed to work its wicked will on forests the growth of centuries will suffer seriously from our want of care and foresight, even setting aside the claims of posterity. The present system of licensing a class of ignorant men to hack and hew where and how they please, taking or leaving what they choose, has led to terrible waste and destruction. Every summer many square miles of forest land are swept with fire, the remains of fallen trees helping to burn the valuable timber left standing. Regulations have been framed from time to time by the Board of Land and Works for the better management and protection of the forests; but these cannot be enforced by the few Crown Lands bailiffs, who for the most part have work of another character to fully occupy their time. And so strong has the habit of careless waste become where trees have been always looked on as the property of any one who might choose to appropriate them, that it will be hard now to enforce even the moat judicious regulations, based on the supposition that growing timber is the property of the State, and only to be appropriated with due regard to the interest of the public, present and to come. New regulations for forest management and the issue of licenses to cut timber were promulgated last year by the Board, and again is a change to he made to meet the supposed requirements of the ever varying case. These regulations were to be earned out by, and therefore were solely adapted for, officials acting by direction of the Board under certain clauses of the Land Act; but the principle of local government is to be invoked. The Board of Land and Works having avowedly failed in forest management, it was said that local forest boards should be appointed. The men forming these would be all personally interested in the subject, both in regard to present use and future supply, and, being on the spot, would know what the regulations for each district should be, as well as how they could he enforced. They would be, personally, so many energetic overseers, and no act of an injurious or objectionable character on the part of sawyers, splitters, and wood-carters could escape their notice. Such were the representations ; and, after much correspondence and many deputations, it was determined that there should be a Bendigo Woods and Forest Boaid at Sandhurst, to undertake the control and management of the State forests in that district. Rather more than twelve months ago this was gazetted, the members constituting it being the presidents and chairmen of the several municipal councils, shire councils, road and mining boards around the central city. Regulations were also framed and approved of, fixing the amounts to be paid as license fees for the cutting and removal of timber, providing for the complete use without waste of the trees cut, the planting of young trees, the care of those of spontaneous growth, and the organisation of a staff of officers to see that the new system for the economic use and renewal of the forests was duly carried out. But at this stage a difficulty, insurmountable for the time, was encountered. Without a revenue no staff of foresters was possible, and therefore no new system, no better management. The revenue •was apparently to come from the forests themselves, but some busybody inconveniently asked a question, namely, bad such local bodies power to issue licenses and demand fees for the cutting of timber, even when duly gazetted and apparently authorised so to do by the Governor in Council. This was, of course, «• referred to the law officers, and they declared that the Board of Land and Works had no power to delegate- to others the right to issue licenses and receive fees for the cutting of timber, that thfe deputed authority could only extend to the preservation of good order and decency, not to the raising of revenue. It was awkward to learn that the proclamations and orders in council were ultra vires and of no effect, but there was no help for it, and the Bendigo Woods and Forest Board had to be told that their control over the State forests could only be partial for a time, and in a direction they cared not for, as the members’ were not inclined to spend any money on the forests which did not come from them ; in fact, the inclination appears to be the other way, as some of the local bodies have expressed an intention to expend a portion of the money thence derived on the making of roads. However, the Board still exists, and not altogether in a state of suspended animation, for in addition to affording other proofs of vitality, it has objected to selectors taking up land within the boundaries, of the forests which arc to be some day under its control, and so reducing the extent of these ; and on these objections being overlooked, the Minister of Lands has been accused of breach of faith. So the matter stands at present; and, beyond letter-writing, little can be done until an Act has been passed by Parliament, providing for the special management and control of State forests, and repealing, or partially repealing, those clauses of the Land Act under which all affairs in relation thereto are now administered. A Ballarat Forest Board was also gazetted in September last, similarly constituted to that at Sandhurst, and to have control over the whole of the Bußarook State Forest. Thus, a difficulty of another sort arose; or, more correctly speaking, was raised by the want of care and forethought. It so happens that portions of this forest are in several different shires, and that the valuable timber remaining is nearly all within the boundaries of the shires farthest from Ballarat. But the Councils on the Ballarat side have an overwhelmning majority of members, though little timber. This mistake was quickly pointed out by the representatives of the shires having timber, and the Board was informed that it was not intended to hand over control of the portions of the State forest within the shires of Ballan and Bungaree, but that the control and management of the timber reserves within the shires of Ballarat, Creswick, Bungaree, Buninyong, Ballan, and Meredith, would be transferred by the Board of Lands and Works to the Ballarat Forest Board. This proposal, however, did not meet ■with the approval of that body, the reserves being for the most part denuded of their best timber, and of trifling extent, besides, in comparison with the State forest. Thus the majority of the members wished to keep the Minister of Lands to the letter of his bond as declared by proclamation, while the minority desired to withdraw from such an unprofitable partnership. Ballarat has used all the timber from the territory properly hers, and does not want the care of forests incapable of yielding a revenue or return of any sort without many years of care and expensive nursing, while the shires of Ballan, Bungaree, and Glenlydn have protested against the sale of their timber to afford a revenue for the renovation of portions of the forest, which will eventually be for the sole use and benefit of Ballarat. The protesting shires say that they want all the revenue they can get for the preservation and care of their own forests and the making of roads • through them, and they plainly have justice on their side; but this squabbling about revenue is instructive, as indicating that this will be the first object with local bodies if the forests are entrusted to their care and control. The controversy is going on still, the majority urging that faith be kept with the Board, the minority protesting against this being done, and in the meantime planning how they can have themselves and their territory excluded from the arrangement. But the legal difficulty raised in the former case applies equally in this, and prevents any further or final action being taken until the whole subject has been ventilated in Parliament. In both instances there has been sad bungling, boding ill for the inauguration of local management in forest matters. But these have been sadly neglected or mismanaged hitherto, and a new system is not to be introduced without many failures and disappointments. As affording, apparently, a prospect of escape from these difficulties and complications, a partial /return has been made to management from head-quarters, and it was thought fit in March last to appoint a third—this time a Central State Forest Board. It could, of course, have no more legal powers than the others, and could only act in important matters by advising or making sugges-

tions to the Minister, or Board of Land and Works. There can, however, be no system of forestry or forest management without a head, and, apart from the mere work of unravelling the tangled skeiu already in hand, there 'will be plenty for this Central Board to do. It consisted at first of the assistant-commis-sioner of lands and the Secretary for Mines; and from the former gentleman’s thorough knowledge of the country and experience in arboriculture, the business marked out for it would no doubt have been of a thoroughly practical character. But, as everybody has learned, Mr. Hodgkinson had soon after to retire from active life, and Messrs. Archer and Wallis were appointed- in his place. It is hard to predict what course of action the three secretaries mil mark out for themselves, or what sort of legislation they will advise. For one of the first demands upon the Central Forest Board was, after due inquiry and consideration of the wants of the many interests involved, to prepare the heads of a Bill to be laid before Parliament. But the general work devolving on the Board is of no little importance. It has to perform the functions of a Local Land Board in regard to all selections of land applied for in any one of the many State forests, timber reserves, or proposed timber reserves. The boundaries of these are only on paper, where they have been defined at all, and are continually altered, even when thus far advanced, so that selectors, in pegging out allotments in timbered country, cannot possibly know whether they are within the tabooed boundaries or not. And no rule applies in these cases, for it is frequently advantageous that selections should be taken up on the verge of these reserves, in order to render the fencing of them more easy. In most of the centrally-situated forests scattered selections were taken up before they were proclaimed, and it would be beneficial that these should bo united, as it were, into solid blocks of settlement by the occupation of the intervening sections. Many portions of denuded forest are also bettor for agriculture than for growing trees again, so that the Central Forest Board must needs have a rather potential voice in the settlement of the country. Then the regulations for forest management in every district will have to emanate from or be approved by this body, which will have, besides, to provide for the renewal as well as the preservation of the forests thrown on its hands, and these are likely to be on the whole extensive, even though the principle of local management be successfully applied It will have, in fact, to found a system of forestry adapted to our circumstances ; for the present mode of issuing licenses at a nominal fee, authorising the holders to cut, waste, or destroy as many trees as they please, with the mere mockery of supervision, is a -.most insensate mode of authorising the rapid .. destruction of a vast capital which we cannot replace. Timber is taken from the public forest lands to the value of, probably, two millions each year, and the income derived by the State from the licenses authorising this removal amounts to about .£3OOO at the rates now charged. This error was long since discovered in America and in India, and nearer home in Hew Zealand, where the better management of forests has been long talked of, if not actually accomplished, to prevent an actual scarcity in some portions of the Islands, and where direct encouragement for the planting of timber trees has been afforded by law. In India the scarcity was beginning to be so severely felt, owing to the reckless destruction of the gram! forests there, that the Central Government had to bring the best talent at its command to bear on the subject, and the result has been the organisation of a department so complete that in the thickly populated portions of the dependency the timber is felled and sawn, and sold almost by retail beside the nearest road or railroad, or by the banks of the nearest navigable river, or else each tree is sold separately as it stands, to be removed within a fixed period. And to this stage of civilisation in forestry we must come speedily, with regard to our redgum trees at least, for if the present wasteful system be not checked with them, this most valuable timber will soon be as scarce and dear as teak now is in India.