STATE FORESTRY IN NEW ZEALAND.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 4226, 6 October 1874, Page 3

STATE FORESTRY IN NEW ZEALAND.

(Prom the Adelaide Observer, Sept. 5.) Of all the Australian Colonies, New Zealand is perhaps the best provided with extensive forests containing trees of great industrial and commercial value. Not only do her thickly-wooded ranges afford the rapidly increasing population an abundant supply of timber for building, mining, and manufacturing purposes, but they contribute in no despicable degree to swell the exports of the country. Hitherto the same reckless and improvident manner of dealing with this description of State property has been permitted there that exists in South Australia, and as a matter of course with precisely similar consequences. The settled districts are rapidly becoming entirely denuded of useful trees. To meet the largely increasing demand for timber is every year a more difficult work, and the fact is rendered apparent that if the present wasteful system is alb wed to continue the time must come when the forests will be completely exhausted. With far-seeing policy the Government of New Zealand have addressed themselves to the task of grappling with this evil before it gets I beyond control. They have submitted to Parliament a comprehensive scheme for the establishment and systematic management of State forests, to which, except in one particular, a very favorable reception has been accorded. The Bill in which these proposals were embodied originally contemplated vesting in the State three per cent, of all the waste lands of the Colony for the purposes of forest-planting and conservation. To this seizure of their property the Provincial Governments, to whom the waste lands belong, objected, and the scheme had to be modified so as to leave it optional with the Provinces to present the General Government with such portions of land as they see fit. Thus altered, the measure met with hearty support. It provides that a sum of £IO,OOO shall be annually appropriated for the creation, improvement, and extension of State forests, which are to be under the care of a responsible Minister of the Crown, called the " Commissioner of State Porests." A Conservator, two. Assistant Commissioners, and other officer* are to be appointed. The system of management will include the formation of nurseries, the construction of roads and bridges to give access to the forests, the planting of land at the disposal of the department, the careful supervision of natural forests, and the establishment of institutions for teaching forestry. The reform contemplated is in fact of the most radical kind, and involves the introduction of a system somewhat akin to that which has been so successful in Germany in dealing with all forest matters. The speech in which Mr. Vogel commended the scheme for which he is principally responsible to the notice of the New Zealand Parliament, is an exhaustive and able exposition of the duty of every State to adopt an intelligent and scientific method of forest management. At the outset he brings forward an imposing array of facts and authorities to prove the injurious effects which the wholesale destruction of trees has upon the climate and rainfall of a country. Some of the Leeward Islands are instanced, which were at one time visited with abundant rain and susceptible of higher cultivation, but since the removal of their forests have become little better than arid deserts, while neighbouring islands, upon which extensive groves still exist, retain their former fertility. Upon the authority of the Commission of Agriculture it is asserted that in the State of Maine since the hills were denuded of trees, a marked diminution in the volume of the streams haß been noticed, many of the old trout brooks having become completely dry. Through the diminished protection against the cold winds, fruits which at one time flourished there can no longer bo grown. This is notably the case as regards the peach, which gradually "retired from Maine, quitted Southern New Hampshire, lingered for a time in New Massachusetts, and has finally been driven from all New England, except some favored spots where shelter has been provided." At Santa Cruz, again, which within the memory of man was a garden of freshness and beauty and fertility, the destruction of tho forests has caused a deplorable change. Over a third of the island first the rains became uncertain, and the sugar-canes failed ; then a meagre pasturage was maintained for a few years ; and finally the land became desert, producing only a sparse vegotation of cactus and other worthless plants. So many instances of a similar kind are upon record that Mr. Vogel unhesitatingly endorses the opinion of Professor Macarel, that, apart from the wealth they offer, forests are of incalculable benefit to a country in other ways. Whilo influencing the rainfall and exerting a beneficial and healthy effect upon the atmosphere, "they deaden and break the force of heavy winds that beat out the seeds and injure the growth of plants, they form reservoirs of moisture, they shelter the soil of the fields, and upon hillsides, where the rainwaters, checked in their descent by the thousand obstacles they present by their roots and trunks, have time to filter into the soil, and only find their way by slow degrees iuto the rivers. They regulate in a certain degree the hygrometrical condition of the atmosphere, and their destruction accordingly increases the duration of droughts, and gives rise to the injuries of inundations which denude the face of the mountains."