The Cost of Destroying the Forest

New Zealand Listener, Volume 2, Issue 51, 14 June 1940, Page 10

The Cost of Destroying the Forest

IRST we have the unfortunate effects on forest bird life. It would be expected that a decrease in numbers would occur with the destruction of the forest. Actually it was disproportionately greater, for destruction of habitat was only one of the many adverse factors of which the direct attacks of predacious, alien mammals was the most serious, To the attacks of cats, rats, stoats and weasels, may be attributed the scarcity of birds in areas of forest to all outward appearance in its virgin condition. Quite apart from their scientific and aesthetic interest, these forest birds are of vital economic importance acting in a three-fold way, pollinating flowers, distributing seeds, and assisting to control insect pests. . . Then immeasurable as it may be in money terms, the influence of the forest upon stream-flow and soil stability is none the less real. It is only a minority of the farming community which continues in sufficiently long occupation of any one area to appreciate fully the slow but sure effects of forest devastation, whether by saw-miller or settler, to watch land-slides develop one by one, to find springs reducing their flow or ceasing altogether, and to see the rivers aggrading their beds and wandering across the rich bottom lands, carrying the best soil out to sea. All are long-term effects and it is the exception to connect’ such occurrences with the odd scrub and forest fire, the devastation of the saw-miller or the destruction by deer.-(From "Using and Abusing Vegetation" in Microphone Roundtable series, 3Y A, May 29.)