FILMING THE FIGHT AGAINST EROSION

New Zealand Listener, Volume 14, Issue 358, 3 May 1946, Page 6

FILMING THE FIGHT AGAINST EROSION

PW.D. makes Documentaries un Technicolour

progress are apt to cause the townsman in New Zealand to dismiss rather casually news of an. abandoned farming area. It is merely an accepted condition of some of our third-class land. It is uneconomic to farm it, so why worry? But there is a branch of the Public Works Department that does worry-very considerably. TP act and rapid This department, usually associated with bulldozers, wheelbarrows, tunnels, pipe lines and blue prints, has several branches of specialists. One, dealing solely with soil conservation and rivers control, is extending its work over a wide area. A _ representative of The Listener discovered that by sitting in a theatrette in the P.W.D. building in Wellington, and interviewing officers of the branch, while watching colour films of erosion and its remedies in the Poverty and Hawke’s Bay districts. Flood menace, bridges washed away, and damaged highways first brought soil erosion to official notice, one staff man explained. Catchment boards were set up in both islands, supervising an aggregate area of 42,000 square miles with a capital value of £262,000,000 and a population of 603,000-or 42 per cent of the Dominion total. In time there will probably be 20 to 24 Boards covering most of the country, but action has been taken first where it was most urgent, and in every case this has been brought about by the cooperation of local authorities.

Each district, we were told, includes the whole of one or more river valleys, and the boundary. goes right to the watershed, to give the Board. full control from the hilltop to the sea. These Boards have the widest powers to carry out their duties. They are, mostly of 15 members, of which ten are elected and five are Government nominees. Six, Boards were elected two years ago and four are one year old. Law in Retirement Soil conservation is. an entirely new activity. Its object is to preserve land fertility, and to prevent the richness of the land being lost. It is also to prevent the pouring of soil and rock into rivers. Erosion has been caused by unwise long-term clearing of land, we were told, and we shall have to wait a long time before there is any noticeable improvement. But a number of projects for conservation have been started and investigations are being made about the purchases of some properties of hill country, with the idea of closing them up and "retiring" them from farming. The Soil Conservation and Rivers Control Council has begun extensive trials in Poverty Bay to test which grasses are most suitable for grassing both new and old slips. Investigations are also being made into the possibility of establishing two research stationsone on hill country in the’ North Island and one in the high country of the South Island. These will be used for trying out various methods of conserving soil. In very severely slipped country in Poverty Bay a working party is to carry out experiments in gully control. On the staff side, the council is calling applications for the three Soil Conservators and arrangements are being made to train. returned servicemen by assisting studies at. Lincoln College. The North Canterbury Board has appointed its own conservator and the South Canterbury Board has appointed a pastoral liaison officer. Erosion in Technicolour So much for the administrative side. The council’s film unit has been operating for two years with a staff of three. Good movies in colour are taken by members of the. staff and are shown to gatherings of farmers. The unit will visit the South Island in August, starting with North Canterbury. The films show pictures of actual cases of erosion, contrasted with flourishing farm lands. They show, too, the causes of erosion, whether they are overstocking of land or burning. It is emphasised that permanent control is in the upper lands, where vegetation holds the soil and keeps the debris out of rivers, Control schemes near the mouths of rivers are said to be useless if the trouble is ‘not treated at the source. ’ Two of the films on circuit are "Molesworth" and "Poverty Bay." Others(continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) Amefican-are "The River’ (Mississippi), "The Heritage We Guard" and "For Years to Come," the last showing a year’s farming operations when conservation has been introduced. We asked a member of the staff to tell us, very briefly, just what his ideas of conservation were. Here is what he said: The main idea is to have natural growth on the steeper slopes. If the land has been cleared, put in adequate vegetation cover according to slope, climate and ‘soil. This will mean grass on gentle slopes and flats, and on steep, erodable country, natural vegetation. For intermediate country there should be a compromise between grass and trees... The films show all these things. Groves and spaced trees are best for unstable slopes, but trees alone are, in some cases, just a waste of time, on account of the cost and the time they take to grow. Molesworth is Conyalescing Molesworth, of more than a quarter of a million acres, we were told, was a flourishing productive unit 25 years ago, carrying 50,000 sheep. In 1938 the Lands and Survey Department took under its care this anaemic and exhausted high country run in the mountains of Marl. borough. It is one of a number of Crown leaseholds which the lessees were forced by economic conditions and soil erosion to abandon. Now Molesworth is in the convalescent stage and steadily improving through being "spelled" and through intensive rabbiting. "It took a hundred years to wreck it," said an officer. "Who can forecast the date-of its return to full productivity? To-day it is grazing 3000 cattle. But regeneration is now taking place, for Nature is being given the opportunity to demonstrate, in a practical experiment, effective methods of rehabilitating such areas." To-day at Molesworth can be observed the virtues of "spelling" and natural seeding; the benefits of rabbit control and of reducing burning; the results of sowing with improved grasses; the way hardy pioneering plants assert themselves among the stones; how several very palatable grasses dominate certain areas; the effect of improved ground cover in checking soil erosion; the value of the production of supplementary feed, and of strictly controlled and deferred grazing by an optimum number of cattle. Work to be Extended The Soil Conservation Council proposes to extend its work considerably and | to make many more films showing causes, | effects and remedies, as well as to carry out practical demonstrations. Part of its publicity campaign is to send thousands of bulletins to all schools, "catchment boards, farmers’ unions, mercantile firms and banks. This form of. propaganda is ‘supplemented by films and film strips. As far as the colour films are concerned, everything but processing is done in New Zealand. The staff edits and complies its own sound tracks, but the films are sent to Australia to be processed. The film \strips are distributed to all film libraries of the various education boards. Moreover, more than 60 schools in New Zealand ‘have their own movie projectors, so that every effort is being made, through these media, to enlist recruits in the fight against soil erosion.