PLANTING OF FORESTS ON WASTE LANDS

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 144, 8 September 1927, Page 7

PLANTING OF FORESTS ON WASTE LANDS

REPORT BY DIRECTOR (THE SUN’S Parliamentary Reporter.) WELLINGTON, To-day. It would take 200 years, and an expenditure of over £10,000,000. based on present planting costs, to establish continuous crop-production forests on New Zealand’s four million acres of deteriorated land. This estimate of the solution of the biggest agricultural problem facing the Dominion to-day—the utilisation of the idle wastes—is made by the Director of Forestry, Mr. L. Macintosh Ellis, who in his annual report expresses the opinion that this is not practical politics for even a country so richly endowed as New Zealand. “What, then, is the alternative?” he asks. "Must these wastes remain for ever a liability, or can they be utilised to produce useful timber crops?-” A comparison of the State Forest Service forest plantation practices and costs, with those of other countries, as made by the director, discloses that both in economy and results high standards prevail, and it does not appear possible that any further cost reductions of a substantial nature can be made in the present system of treeplanting. This cost-of-establishment factor has an important relation to the problem of converting to productive use the Dominion’s idle waste or deteriorated lands, estimated at approximately 5.000.000 acres, and to the State moneys available for this purpose.

“This national problem has had the continuous attention of the officers of the State Forest Service since 1920,” he says, “and its solution appears to be in" what may be termed 'direct plantation formation.’ “While it is premature to dogmatise, it is expected that the application of direct plantation formation practices, now being perfected, will enable the forest authority to establish commercial forests, within tlie present average budgeted appropriations, over the five million acres of waste lands within 25 years, instead of in 200 years. No more can be said concerning this important subject, however, until a definite procedure has been perfected, which it is anticipated will be in two years time. The operation of sustained forest cropping on these lands would make New Zealand the principal wood-goods suppliers to the Empire.” -