The State Forests

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 82, 28 June 1927, Page 13

The State Forests

millions of trees FLOURISH IN THE WHAKA PLANTATION.

DEPARTMENT'S GREAT WORK There is a fascination for most people in native bush, but there is real romance attaching to the manmade forest. Nowhere is this more strongly evidenced than at the plantations of the State Forest Department at Whakarewarewa. He. e great hills, almost mountains, Have been planted with millions upon millions of trees. It is aweinspiring, and even the workers on the plantation regard the area with an interest and feeling of pride of ownership.

ters of the Whaka and Kaingaroa forestry plantations are interesting. -These plantations are approached through the heart of the thermal region through rushing hot water and clouds of steam. Then abrupty, through a gate, a gravelled drive is seen, bordered with beautiful many-hued trees and thermal activity seems a thing of another w'orld. From the drive we glimpse bright white buildings, stretching from either side of which are the nursery plots, with their millions of young trees, and behind which are the nearest of the trees of the actual plantation, a veritable cliff of tree trunks and green foliage, seeming in proportion to rise hundreds of feet. A VAST NURSERY It is a pleasure to meet Mr. W. T. Morrison, Conservator of Forests, who summarises what the department is doing in this area, and then sends the visitor out to look upon an attractive expanse of nursery forest. The plantation figures are all in thousands and millions. Time was when they were in hundreds and thousands, mostly hundreds. Briefly, at the end of the present year there will be practically 90,000 acres in the Whaka and Kaingaroa area, and the number of trees will exceed 100 million. Planting has ceased at Whaka, and about 200 men are enlarging the Kaingaroa plantations. In the latter there is one road running for 21 miles through the artificial forest, and the present planters’ camps are anything frbm 15 to 23 miles from the central camp. Though the nurseries are confined to trees of shelter and timber-producing qualities, there has been a good deal of experimenting with trees of a more decorative variety, and these make a most delightful showing at Whaka. A PROMISING TRIO

Three trees in particular form an attractive centre of interest. Here are a totara, a rirau, and a Californian redwood —three ordinary trees. To the casual glance they tell nothing, but to those who know they telL an impressive story. They were seedlings together, and have been growing for between 25 and 26 years, each under the best conditions possible in the plantation. Their measurements, taken last Saturday morning, are as follow: Circum-

ference. Height. Californian redwood .. 9ft 62ft Rlmu .. 3&ln 32ft Totara 2ft sin ”4ft The future possibilities of the three trees, and the prospective prices of their timber, can easily be conjectured. ROUND THE GROUNDS Thence to the main nursery beds, where the figure factor again impresses the visitor. In a few acres there are somewhere about 22 million young trees, all of the utilitarian varieties, mostly intended for the hills and mountains within a few miles of the thermal region. Let us walk into the actual plantation. Here a thinning-out lias left trees of a uniform size, rapidly approaching maturity, and. the time when shrieking saws will provide the timber that will pay back in money the amounts that have been expended in the past 25 years. In fact, the Government expects the. forests to return about £IOO,OOO a year from timber alone, and there are various side-lmes which are already making a substantial return. One of these is the timber thinned out to make the forest? uniform. There is an increasing amount of timber coming to maturity even now. but as the first plantings were only about 100 acres a jlear the cost of milling does not yet allow of a sufficient return. ~ , . At some stage in the visit there is bound to be encountered a party of Maoris industriously getting the young trees ready for their new life in the hills. Most of the labour is done by the Maoris. Some of them, men and women, have been on the plantations for 25 years or more, and know quite as much about the practical side of the business as the experts On the start. And, coming away, one has a ing feeling that he is leaving behind a small colony of people who are extremely happy in their productive work under delightful conditions, *" roundings that are second to none in the industries of the world.