TREES BY THE MILLION

Taranaki Central Press, Volume IV, Issue 408, 15 April 1937, Page 2

TREES BY THE MILLION

AMBITIOUS SCHEME Beating the Rabbit Pest. London, March 25. Four million Corsician and Scottish pine trees as well as a million oak, ash, birch and beech saplings l have been planted on a belt of meagre soil which runs through parts of Norfolk and Suffolk. They make a forest covering 50,000 acres. Planting is more concentrated than anything yet Known, and when the scheme is completed there will be 2000 trees to every acre. Fresh planting goes on at the rate of 8000 acres a year. Waste land left to bracken and rabbits is being reclaimed to grow timber to replace forests which were denuded in the war years, and to form some reserve at a time when, it has been estimated, the world’s consumption of timber is 50 per cent, greater than the production. The first and the lasting problem of raising these nev.' pine forests on the sandy soils is to beat the rabbit pest. Here the whole scheme is dependent on the old warreners. In the first drive enough rabbits are caught to piay for catching costs. As they are reduced so does the task become more difficult and expensive. But the task is not abandoned until the last of these pests has been caught, and even then from morning till night the foresters patrol the miles of wire netting to make sure that there is no hole through which rabbits can work their way to destroy the young trees.