KAURI PLANTATIONS.

Taranaki Daily News, 31 March 1920, Page 5

KAURI PLANTATIONS.

WONDERFUL POSSIBILITIES. In a report by Sir David Hutehins on New Zealand Forestry, which is now being circulated, much space is devoted to kauri. Sir David comments upon the enormous loss sustained by the Dominion through reckless destruction of these magnificent trees. He says that, instead of possessing a million acres of good kauri forest, the Dominion is left with a ragged remnant, but this remnant, he says, holds wonderful possibilities. He affirms that it is quite practicable to restore and cultivate kauri forests on an area of half a million acres, the bulk of it situated, in the Coromandel Peninsula and in Hokianga. This area would include the few kauri forests ii< the hands of the State. As a whole, it represents some of the poorest land in the Dominion from the standpoint of ordinary settlement. Planted/with kauri, Sir Diavid Hutching states, it would yield to the State 100 years hence a net revenue of over £lO per acre per annum, or £5,000,000 per annum in the aggregate revenue, which would foe very much more than sufficient to extinguish a burden equal to the present war debt. The full return is distant, but there are much nearer benefits to be gained from re-establishing the kauri forests. The commercial possibilities of kauri cultivation rests upon the growth of a tree with a diameter of 2ft or 2ft Cm, and a bole of 60ft. Basing his opinion on imieh accumulated! Sip David Hutehins states that kauri trees will' reach this size in about 100 years. The cultivated kauri forest, Sir David Hutchins states, would be eight times as productive as the wild forest. In other words, "cultivated forest of but moderate capacity on one-eighth of the area of the old virgin forest would bring back the kauri timber industry to what it was at its best. Auckland has probably never had more than 2,000,000 acres of kauri forest to draw on, and wasted more than half the timber in the working. That half-million trees of kauri forest would give Auckland a kauri timber industry with some four times the supply, in perpetuity, that it had temporarily, in the bast of tho old days."