TE AROHA A NATIONAL PARK

Te Aroha News, Volume XVI, Issue 222048, 8 February 1900, Page 3

TE AROHA A NATIONAL PARK

The following letter, which appeared in yesterday’s Herald, gives some idea what visitors to Te Aroha think of its

surroundings: ‘Sir, —As an enthusiastic lover of Now Zealand forest scenery, and especially of its forest-clad mountains, may I ask the favour of a little space in columns in which to advocate the claim* l of one of the noblest of nature’s works in these islands —Te Aroha mountain. lam not a resident of To Aroha, nor do I hold any brief for that place ; I hail from the Southwest coast of this island, where for many years the lovers of forest scenery have had the sorrow of seeing the natural beauties of the noble Tararua and Ruahinc ranges in large degre e disappearing before the settler’s tiro rrr<l ; lam not the only ore tu New Zealand by a great many who has daily regretted ilio rapid disappearance of the native bush, and X , have often said and thought that in 50 years there would scarcely be vestige of it left to remind the old people of the early days when the tui played and sang among the branches of the (rimson rata and the yellow kowhai. The native forests are fast sharing the fat-o of the native people, and the native birds, the tui, the pigeon, and the kaka—they are passing away. It deeply to be regretted that the Rimutaka, Tararua, and Ruahine mountain ranges were not from the first made a forest reserve for the preservation of c'imate, scenery, and natSisPe birds. There can be little doubt that the wholesale forest denudation of the la £ t 25 years in the North Island must have had a prejudicial effect on the climate of New Zealand. None of the rising generation will ever see such magnificent forest giants as those which but a few yeais ago towered around the base of Mount Egmont. I admit the destruction of the Taranaki forests was inevltab'o. • They had to yield to the exigencies of settlement. The great trees had to make way for the settler, his home, his children, and his c ws. Still, wo cannot hut rogrrt tho fact. The Taranaki streams, flowing from thg snows and wooded slopes of Mount overhung with spreading trees, the wat< rs foaming amourig the boulders beneath, were the j y of the earth. The waters are still there, doubtless, but the shading woods are gone.'

In paying a visit to An bland, tho Thames, and R'torn a, I fe't quite cheered to find that there is still left in New Zealand a forest range where for 8o:ne reason or other (perhaps because of its entire sterikty) 'the rage of the spoiler ’ has made comparatively little havoc with its wooded heights. I allude to the mountain country extending from Cape Colville to the neighbout hood of Tauranga. I may say, in passing, that while riding up the Thames Yalley I noted a large piece of the range cleared and burned near Matamata. One of the finest, perhaps altogether tho finest part of that range, is undoubtedly Te Aroha, 3200 ft, a noble mountain giant mantled almost from base to summit by the richest New Zealand scenery, the crimson rata and the graceful tree fei n. I have just visited Te Aroha and climbed to its summit I was much delighted, as well as agreeably surprised, to find, aftor an absence of 15 years, that it had not only retained its imperial beauty and verdure, hut that the domain authorities had laid out that lovely place so as to add to, and set off, the towering grandeur of the original landscape. And it is to plead jiff- lor the permanent conservation of this beauty that I am venturing to write these lines, in order to urge that the - whole mountain should be set aside as a national park, where no despoiling axe may be allowed to come. Ruapehu has been made a national park. So has Mount Egmont and its adjoining ranges. Is there any reason why To Aroha should not he fenced in the same safe-guard, and its glorious beauties preserved from generation 'to generation for the delight of millions yet unborn, who will thus have, as it wore, a glimpse of tho landscape of old New Zealand as it appeared in tho days when the pakeha was not, and the Maori hunted and fought over hill and dale ? allow me to express the earnest -]roT ,/ ' that our Scenery Prevention S"cie*y, or someone having the ear of the Government, will take this matter up, and thus save the majestic Te , J Aroha from the ruin which has overtaken many of nature’s choicest landscapes in New Zealand.’—l am, etc.,

Visitor,

Roo