TREES ARE NOT FOR BURNING

New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 535, 23 September 1949, Page 6

TREES ARE NOT FOR BURNING

HE Chief Inspector of the New Zealand State Forest Service, C. M. Smith, spends part of his time in the field, extending from Spirits Bay to Bluff, and part of it in a sunny room crowded "with books and reports and wood specimens in a building in Fitzherbert Terrace, Wellington. If you go to visit him there you will notice that the building in which he works is old and high and generous in its proportions; and the moment you show any interest in the polished panels of New Zealand woods on the walls-and you will surely be unable to hide your interest, so satin-and-watered-silk beautiful they are-you will be told what house you are in: the old Beauchamp house, the home of Katherine Mansfield. You may be told that the approximate age of this house can be judged by its 14-by-1 kauri weatherboards; but if you came to see Mr, Smith about the New Zealand State Forest Service, as I did, you will have to wait for another

visit to speculate about the possible life of K.M. in that house. Mr. Smith took down a Statute book to make firmly clear the basic principle of New Zealand State Forest Administration: all land set aside for State Forests is set aside for that purpose only and may not be used or sold for any other purpose; "inalienability of State Forests," is the technical and legal phrase for this basic principle. In plain 1949 house-hunters’ language it means that no one may buy or lease a section of State Forest Reserve for residences. So the envious who see houses being built on sections cut .into forests anywhere will know by that sign that the forests are not State-owned; if they are State-owned there will be no sections, no vegetable patches, no summer cabins and no tea-kiosks for tourists. Among the other amenities not ‘allowed are fires; "NO SMOKING" applies as wait ies as in a petrol station. Dream- Wheel In its earliest years the Service was unlucky: "In 1896, in Seddon’s time, a group of men in Central Otago looked

at the treeless waste and had a vision: they imagined an enormous Wheel with the hub at Ranfurly and the spokes going out in all directions in magnificent plantations of trees. So the State Forest Service began at Ranfurly-to be precise, at Wedderburn-and the first spokes of the dream-wheel were planted. To-day we have a small stand, far from healthy or profitable or hopeful, at Naseby. That is all that remains of the magnificent vision of 1896-and the land is still a great treeless waste." "But what do they do for firewood?" "They burn lignite. In 100 houses you might find as many as three woodburning grates, and even those would be extra grates, used for special occasions. Lignite fires are burnt day in and day out for seven months of the year." My interest in firewood introduced Canterbury. Yes, Mr. Smith said, Canterbury was a wood-buying community; but if I thought forestry was earning its daily bread these days from the firewood trade I was wrong. Times had changed. "Twenty years ago every sawmill in the country burnt up its own waste wood ‘to generate its steam-power, now many of them run on electricity; twenty years ago the railways started up their fires on wood, factories burnt wood, and cooks and washerwomen burnt wood; now they all use largely coal or electricity and We use coal or electricity to heat our houses and public buildings." : ‘ Thwarted and disappointed, thinking of the cords of wood for lack of which Wellingtonians suffer more than they know, I asked if Dunedin was also wood-burning community. "Yes, it is. But not as Canterbury is. When I go back to Dunedin in the

winter I always notice the typical smel§ that hangs ‘over the *city+-the heavy, sulphurous, "not unpleasant: emeil of lignite. I like it." "So forestry and the firewood trade have no connexion?" "Well, unfortunately less and less every year. But forestry and houses, axe handles, butter boxes, telegraph poles, furniture and fence posts-that’s dif+ ferent." This meant harvesting the native forests as well’as the introduced forests -what was the approximate area of the two kinds? A Few Million Trees "Of indigenous forest the State has 81% million acres,’ Mr. Smith said. Calmly I took the note-8%2 million acres of native forests. "And 400,000 acres, less than half a million, of exotics, or as we say aftificial forests." But they were all planted by hand, each tree separately-how many trees to the acre? By the time I had all the figures I almost wished I had not asked: the sum begins with the simple statement -the planting:is at an average density of 1,000 trees per acre. After that the complications of renewals, thinning, hare vesting, and replanting set in. It-is safe to say that for the layman, thé none forester, the original planting would cause backache and the _ continuing arithmetic would cause- headache. "But are the native forests replanted by hand after they have been _harvese ted, or do they senew themselves?" I asked. The raeubater did the Hen "Mostly they renew themselves; Nature is the greatest planter — that applies to exotics as well as to indi« genous plants. But we do sow and plant as well, although in general we use the incubator for exotics and let the hen sit for the indigenous renewals, © first

protecting the sitting hen with suitable fences, of course.""’ Mr, Smith explained that research was being done into the seeding and renewal habits of many of our important native trees-it is known that the beeches, especially the Silver or Southland and the Red beeches, are satisfactory regenerators, the totara and kauri are fair, but the rimu is very unsatisfactory and very puzzling in its habits. One of the most depressing facts for a New Zealand forester to face is this: there is no indigenous tree of commercial value that will sprout from a stump or reproduce from a cutting. Private gardeners may achieve isolated successes: with a few of our trees, but it cannot be done on a commercial scale. Therefore the trees must be good seed bearers before artificial reproduction by either the sitting hen or the incubator method is possible. Just one more complication, among many: certain native trees-totara, matai, kahikatea -- bear female flowers on one tree, male flowers on another; if the forester by unlucky chance thins all the females or all the males from any particular stand, that stand is doomed to stagnation. The forester has the choice of marking all the trees in the flowering season or cutting them on an Eena-Deena-Dina-MOW system, ~~ Conservation is Twofold "The whole of our work is conservation," Mr. Smith said. "There are two main divisions-afforestation and management. Afforestation is the setting down of new forests, largely exotics; and management is the maintenance of existing forests, the introduced and the indigenous, and their harvesting without destruction. The big problem is to weld the two divisions together into the whole called conservation." "If this means maintaining the tree population, wouldn’t it help if farmers and others planted more trees?" Mr. Smith sighed. "That is a very big question; it has lately been recommended by the Soil Conservation Council that 3 per cent. of every farr: should be planted in trees for shelter and other farm uses. That’s 18 acres of trees ‘on a 600-acre farm; it doesn’t sound much when you say it quickly; but it means 18,000 trees to be planted by someone; it means 18,000 seedlings to be nursed by someone; and it means hundreds of timés 18,000 seedlings if we are to consider hundreds of farms and not just one, In addition it means fencing, the right kind of fencing-rabbit-proof for five years, stock-proof all the time. And after all the work is done it. will not be forestry — it will be paddocks of trees. I have no objection to trees in paddocks, just as I have no objection to rhododendrons in a private garden; but paddocks of trees are not forestry; trees in the farmyard, with old bits of iron and wire and implements hanging from them, are not parks; and an apple tree in the back garden is not an orchard. Trees in paddocks for sentimental or aesthetic reasons, yes, or even to provide shelter and wood for fence posts and so on; but not with the idea that they contribute much to the scientific work of conservation." "But you would not condemn such varied and exotic woods as the early

settlers put in for shelter or for appearance, or stich a reserve as Deans Bush in Christchurch?" the sentimentalist from Canterbury asked. "No, I would not condemn them, but I would not repeat them. And I would not regard them as economically sound, any more than I would regard a mixed flock of Romneys and Leicesters, and Corriedales and Southdowns and Merinos' as economically sound. As _ for Deans Bush the question is simply ‘will you shoot the old horse or turn him out to grass?’ For the old horse is quite surely going to die, The forester,

the scientist interested in conservation, sees the land and its population-plant, bird, animal and human populationworking together in'a harmony. You cannot have that harmony if you leave a body of plant life in a prehistoric state while everything round it changes. Take Deans Bush-an indigenous forest surrounded by modern houses, concrete drains, and vegetable patches fortified with artificial manures; civilisation is killing it slowly but surely." Mr. Smith has been watching New Zealand forests for 30 years as a forester; he has seen them recede before

fire and axe and plough and bulldozer and rabbit and goat and brumby; and he has seen them grow again according to careful plan and with the protection of scientific treatment, strong’ fences, and thousands of FIRES sae exer notices. "We are dealing with a slow crop, quite unlike wheat; our cycle is a 20year or a 50-year or even. 100-year cycle; but our harvest is there, slow and steady and perpetual-as long as we treat it with the respect and good sense it des,

mands,’

J.