WHITHER ARE WE GOING?

Forest and Bird, Issue 32, 1 April 1934, Page 1

WHITHER ARE WE GOING?

~r~ t ROSION of the high lands is m evidence almost throughout Ml New Zealand. Plant-eating animals are rapidly destroying our M few remaining forests, but the gravity of the situation is not yet fully realised either by the public or the authorities: The sawmiller is continually making inroads into the few remnants of. our forests. Even such national estates as our scenic reserves and the Tongariro National Park are not considered by the limber-getter as sacred. Fire takes its toll year by year. In the meantime all are burdened with intolerable debt and taxation. Are we surely not heading fast to that time when New Zealand, denuded of the original plant life, will be brought to that stage when surface covering will be merely a skeleton of its old-time state, and the producing capabilities will be reduced to vanishing point? Former civilisations perished because of forest denudation. Is our civilisation not yet sufficiently advanced to recognise the perils and insure against it? The time is overdue for a rigid prohibition of forest-clearing on certain highlands where a protective covering is necessary on the watersheds and for a replanting of native forests on steep slopes where short-sighted selfishness or folly has interfered disastrously with Nature.