FARMS V FOREST

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 686, 11 June 1929, Page 8

FARMS V FOREST

NEAR Karioi, at the foot of Mt. Ruapehu, is a very large tract of land which formerly was part of the great Karioi sheep run, a property controlled by the Studholme family, of Canterbury, in days long before there was a Main Trunk railway line, or indeed any access by way of Rangitikei, so that wool had to be packed out to Napier and shipped from there. After carrying sheep for forty or fifty years, the remnant of the property was acquired a couple of years ago by the Forestry Department, and is now gradually being sown with trees. The process has not been watched with satisfaction by the members of the neighbouring farming community, and their hostility to a move which is absorbing what the practical men of the district consider to be excellent farming land illustrates a phase of the farms versus forest controversy touched on by Professor H. H. Corbin in his address to the Auckland Rotary Club yesterday. On the other hand, the retirement of struggling farmers from steep forest country, opened up with less wisdom than enthusiasm in the past twenty years, illuminates an opposite point of view. Just as there may be land under indigenous or exotic growth which is capable of supporting farmers, so there are areas of bush farms which would have been far better left in their original condition, particularly since the valuable timber hewn from the slopes was burned and wasted after the shacks of the settlers had been erected. Many of the past mistakes are irremediable, but they- should point the way to caution in the future. With its persistent tendency to slip, much elevated forest country should never have been cleared, and similar land should for the future be left alone unless careful experiment shows the wisdom of opening it. The Forestry Department should take just as much care that it does not spread plantations over easy country that may be made productive by fertilisers. While the cry for closer settlement is being echoed by a responsive Government, it should be remembered that there is no more effective way of keeping men off the land than the method of locking it up for forty or fifty years in forest. These may be good investments for domestic use, but it is questionable whether Professor Corbin’s optimism concerning export markets will be realised in this class of commodity. A better form of insurance would be a courageous attempt to restore some of the native forests, a process which may take hundreds of years, but which was advised by the Imperial Forestry Delegation which recently visited New Zealand. The members of the delegation stressed, also, the urgent need for extensive thinning operations in the more advanced Rotorua plantations, and it would be interesting to know whether or not this work lias yet been begun.