OVER GRAZING OF UPLAND COUNTRY.

Forest and Bird, Issue 20, 1 March 1930, Page 3

OVER GRAZING OF UPLAND COUNTRY.

(By Ponga.)

A commission set up by the United States of America, has recently furnished a three volume report on the over grazing of high country. Such national disasters as Mississippi floods have led the authorities to see the need of attention to this grave mat-

ter. Here in New Zealnd most of our land is steep with an extremely shallow soil covering. Be it remembered, too, that this soil is always running down towards the sea and never running up. It took the forests, which formerly grew on this land, thousands upon thousands of years to form the covering on the underlying rocks. Ours is a narrow country with no part far removed from the sea. Swift streams and rivers quickly convey anything which enters them to the sea. Surely, then, the too drastic denudation of our highlands in this country calls for thought and enquiry. But when we add to this more or less necessary use of our high country the grazing of millions of plant-eating animals on the forest - covered backbone ranges, surely it is time to do more than think and enquire. There are some, well qualified to judge, who consider that some of these forests on

our southern ranges are already doomed. Are we going to stand idly by while these essential forests are destroyed? If so, every citizen will pay a well merited and heavy penalty because no nation can prosper without a sufficiency of forests, and New Zealand at best can be no more than a paupers’ country and all because we idly looked on and allowed the few to make use of our priceless forests for the sake of a very little mere sport.