BUSH RESERVATION.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVI, Issue 254, 25 March 1914, Page 2

BUSH RESERVATION.

To tlie Editor. Sir,—l see to-day in your leading column remarks with' which I do not agree re forest reserves. Mr. W. W. Smith, Recreation Grounds, will vouch for me as a lover of our "flora and fauna. There are some aspects of the matter of which you are perhaps ignorant. One or two chains of reserve are useless, as the firo generally kills, and, if not, the borer always takes the trees in isolated patches of bush. Then, again, in face ( of the land hunger, no good land should | l)e reserved. There are reserves here of I good land, while adjoining land open for I selection is specially suitable for an I eagle to rest on. Here in Tongaporutu we have just petitioned and got some 500 odd acres of reserve suitable for dairying, thrown open for selection. One portion of this petitioned land has been given to a settler already owning land, and has not gone to the ballot. The remainder has just been surveyed, and should be open soon. Sorry to trespass so much on your space.—l am, etc., ARTHUR COX. Tongaporutu, March 20. [lt was shown by experts befow the Forestry Commission that the preservation of the bush from the river bank to tho skyline of the Mokau was not only practicable, but desirable in the interests of settlement. No objection was raised to felling the bush on the flats. Most of the banks are precipitous and totally unfit for settlement, and"could have been preserved luul the Ward Government accepted the original offer of the owners. Now it lias been irretrievably lost. The present Government has been equally apathetic, allowing the reservation to be lifted from the Everett road reserve, which is totally unfit for - settlement, being river and bank country for the most part. One cannot reasonably object to blocks of good agricultural hind being thrown open for settlement, but it is an entirely different matter with land that lws no productive value. It then becomes a national loss. It was a national loss for the Government to net.'lect. to uroclaim the land abutting n the Mokau a scenic reserve; it is a national crime for the Government to endeavour to rob the people of Inglewood and district of its small portion of river scenery ©a tho Everett road.—Ed.J '