OTHER PEOPLE’S IDEAS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 14 April 1941, Page 7

OTHER PEOPLE’S IDEAS

TREES ANO EROSION (To the Editor.) Sir, —As a newcomer to your lovely countryside and borough 1 have been struck with two aspects of your town and district. First, that your old settlers were enthusiastic growers of trees, mostly exotics, while presumably I an older generation felled and burnt the native forest so thoughtlessly that one looks in vain from the plains to see any patches of forest even vestigial. During the past z few days I have tramped round the outskirts and seen thousands of lovely trees, many of which must be fifty years and upwards, pines and macrocarpa of various kinds, gums (eucalypts) and English trees, a fact that seems to prove a real love of trees, but practically no natives which are the greatest glory of horticulture in the world. Yesterday I came across a long hedge of black matipo, .strong and well grown, and I have seen some kowhai, lacebark and a few others, proof that these will grow freely if given shelter, but that is all. I look across at the hills to the east and west. They are bare but along the skyline may be seen scarred and lank, boles of apparently natives looking forlorn in their loneliness. This fact applies to practically all the ranges from Wellington to Mastertoil and yet the felling goes on in the highlands while erosion and serious floods continue even on your level country and nothing is done to make a cheek, save some most inadequate stopbapks. The remedy lies in the hill country as America and other countries prove. This erosion is one of our great national dangers and problems and must be dealt with by national effort. This is a subject which should be taken up by the people in a real effort to provide a remedy. Although the war is raging, the Public Works might well, devote some of the money being spent on much less needed works to a comprehensive tree-planting programme and to set in motion a project that y.’ill bo so greatly needed as men come back, to provide employment—Yours, etc., VIA TOR. Masterton, April 13.