THE CRIME OP KILLING BUSH.

Patea Mail, 2 August 1882, Page 4

THE CRIME OP KILLING BUSH.

A Canterbury journal in an article advocating the establishment of a Forest Department says : New Zealand is literally being turned into a desert through the blind folly of the colonists in destroying her beautiful and valuable forests. The waste that has already taken place in this way amounts to many millions sterling, and it is still going on at the rate of hundreds of thousands a year. Before many years are over, it will need a day’s journey from any centre of population to see a bit of bush. Already whole districts which within the memory of their present inhabitants, were thickly wooded, are now entirely treeless ; and the results are bitterly felt in flooded streams, droughty seasons, and costly fuel. No crime of a people is followed by swifter or more certain retribution than the wanton destruction of forests. In France, during the Revolution, the whole country was denuded of its trees by fire and waste ; and it is not too much to say that that was one of the main causes of the poverty and degradation of the French during the first half of the present century. Louis Napoleon, a very sagacious ruler in all domestic affairs, made gigantic efforts to repair the errors of the past, by spending millions on plantations ; and now, after thirty years of systematic and unsparing forestry, France is beginning to regain her former fertility and productiveness.