THE TIMBER QUESTION IN AUCKLAND.

Temuka Leader, Volume 2, Issue 119, 5 February 1879, Page 3

THE TIMBER QUESTION IN AUCKLAND.

(New Zealand 'Herald.')

This timber question is really at present the question of questions for Auckland. The kauri cannot be reproduced, and we are cutting the trees down as fast j as skill and labour, and the very best ap pliances in the world, stimulated by high prices, can enable us to do it. Timber is now the staple industry of Auckland, and a collapse—-which, however, is impossible —would be ruinous to us. But within a certain time, and that no long period, we shall have exhausted the forests. It is s difficult matter to put a precise limit to our kauri production, because, with high prices, means will doubtless be adopted to get at the trees now inaccessible by being away from any river or stream on which they can be floated down to the mills ; but perhaps it would be quite safe to say that the man is born who will see the last of the kauri as a merchantable article. At Tairua, a new mill has been started, and also one at Aratapu, and at Whangururu, while others are projected at Manaia and other places. We do not know that it is possible to make a close estimate of the amount of timber now cut, but it is something enormous, and we believe not many iu Auckland have formed a conception of it. Our export trade seems small when one looks from Auckland wharf, but to form a correct idea, one would require to see the vessels at the different ports at the Ivaipai'a, Hokianga, Whangaroa, Mongonui, and the ports on the East Coast. At Aratapu the mill is cutting 300,000 feet per week; Te Kopuru, 100,000 ; Hokianga, 200,000 ; Guthrie and Larnach's mills, 120,000; Whangaroa, 120,000 ; Tairua, 120,000, and so on. Altogether, we estimate roughly, that there are 1,500,000 feet of sawn timber being produced per week from the mills of this province, worth about L 450,000 per annum. There is a very large export of baulk timber. A t Whangaroa there are now five vessels loading, capable of taking away, 1,430,000 feet ; at Makarau and Kaipara, five vessels ;at Hokianga, two vessels. The baulk exported is probably not worth less than LBO,OOO per annum. Nearlj' the whole of the money is spent in labour, one company employing 500 men. The effect which the cutting has had upon the climate is a difficult question to discuss. Were it but the cutting of the kauri trees, the amount of forest land would not be very much affected, but their abstraction opens up the forest, the '• tops : ' are left to feed the first fire, and at length, where there was once a great forest, we have a bare hill side. All bushmen say I hat the climate has of late years greatly changed—that it is much drier than formerly, and that freshes cannot be depended upon as they could once be. We hear of timber having lain in beds of creeks for two years or more, waiting for the flood w,fjch in former times came quite certainly at short intervals. Saw-mill owners, too, stimulated, no doubt, partly by tin- high prices ruling, but also by the growing difficulty in getting out the timber, are about to con-I struct tramways on which to run out the logs. S'»me tlii k that this greater dry- ; ness of ihe weather, which seems un- ' doubted, is owing to a new "cycle" of the seasons. At aU. events, we cannot ' think that the cutting has caused any material change. So far ns we can at present see, things their course ; we must come to the end of our tether. The State cannot interfere with the owners of forests, or compel them to plant where they cut down. But very soon ii; will arise as an economic question, whether it would not be right to plant varieties of gum trees, which grow rapidly and well in this climate, and which produce valuable timber. At all events, we must never forget 'that we can see to the end of our timber industry as at present carried on.