THE RUINED LAND

Forest and Bird, Issue 56, 1 May 1940, Page 6

THE RUINED LAND

(By J. C.)

A MAN-MADE CALAMITY

THE heavy rains which resulted in the recent disastrous floods and wash-aways over a wide area of country in the north Taranaki, north Wellington and Upper Wanganui districts, the heart of this north island, have really been no worse than the downpours of the past. We have had just as heavy a rainfall many times within memory during the last half-century. They simply do more damage because the protective forest garment of the Land has been ripped away, and that is chiefly the result of the egregious blunders of the New Zealand landholder and all the New Zealand land administrations that have ever had to do with the settlement of the country until the last decade. The mischief, the mishandling of the land and the forest, which began with the settlement of the land on a large scale and the felling of timber for sawmilling without replacement, has now proceeded so far that it is almost hopeless to attempt to restore conditions of security and safety. Some of the wrecked districts have appealed to the Government to help them. It is natural that they should; it was the Government that thirty, forty, fifty years ago and more began the work of ruin. The crude old land settlement rule of past Governments, the policy that not only encouraged but enforced the destruction of the guard and shield of bush, is bearing its disastrous fruit to-day. The Governments of the past were obsessed by the all-important grass; nothing else mattered; the bush was simply an encumbrance to be got rid of. The Lands Department would not even wait for the sawmiller; there was a time limit. As for the settlers, the principal sufferers, the trouble often was directly of their own making. Ignorance, lack of any scientific instruction in dealing with soil and vegetation, and the rush for more land than they could handle, rendered them easy instruments for successive land administrations that “opened up the country” for the sake of revenue and dearly-bought production.

Many of us have watched helplessly enough, for we are not politicians, who have it in their power to reform policies the process of soil damage operating all over the newly settled districts gradually working up — or down to the conditions reported last month. I shall take just one of these areas devastated by flood waters as an example of the shocking ruin of a country that should never have been “settled”—what a term of irony it is to-day! This is the region of rough contour between the King Country and Taranaki Ohura, Whangamomona and contiguous districts, as far as Stratford. It is typical bush district, or rather half-and-half mutilated bush and murdered clearings. When I saw it first nearly 50 years ago it was one vast and splendid forest, growing on land that for the most part was broken into sharp ridges and narrow valleys, with here and there a comparatively broad saucer where very tall and really magnificent timber grew. One of these saucers of richest vegetation was Whangamomona. It was raining there, and we camped until the heavy downpour ceased, two or three days. We scarcely felt it in our bush shelter of branches and fern fronds. The rise of the rivers was scarcely perceptible; the thick sponge of ground vegetation below the roof screen of the 100 ft. trees gradually filtered the rainfall and reduced the weight of its assault upon the earth. It was in fact not an assault at all; Nature’s screen of garments tempered its fall to the hills and valleys. That was the back country for scores upon scores of miles before the “opening up” of the country began. Then began also the ruin that brings yells and moans of distress from townships, farms, railways and roads, and thousands of travellers. The country was opened up with a vengeance. The Crown Lands Department compelled all holders of sections to carry out improvements as one of the conditions of retaining their land. These “improvements”

consisted in the first case of felling the bush and burning it off. If they did not make haste to do so, their sections were forfeited and some other plucky but misguided toiler took it up, and a smother of fiery smoke covered the land. Over hundreds of thousands of acres this process was repeated through successive burning-off seasons, until the grass seed began to “take.” It took well at first; there was a lush growth for the first year or two, and then the second stage began, the slipping away of the land and the slippery-slidey blue papa. Trees, shrubs, roots and all are gone. There is nothing to hold the ribs and flesh of the land together. The clearance extended over

the steepest ranges. No need to describe the rest of the sorry progress of settlement. We see it to-day, in all its ugliness and tragedy. But the very sufferers themselves fail to understand the root causes of the ruin. They blame it all on the “unprecedented rainfall.” Scientists tell us that one-third of New Zealand should be under forest. These North Taranaki and Upper Wanganui and King Country highlands were exactly designed by Nature for the purposes of a great forest reserve in perpetuity for recurrent crops of selected timber and for river and soil protections. But who takes notice of old Mother Nature?