FOREST DESTRUCTION.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 30, 24 July 1902, Page 16

FOREST DESTRUCTION.

\PflnSnjsk 1 AS it Carlyle who said that the most melan<sJM/nv//f choly word in any language is the German >A\w m/vX> wor<^ ' nimmermehr' —which, being inter- <&&=* ■sk^bjT preted, meanefch literally ' Nevermore ?' We think our own expression, ' Too late,' is a few times more desolate and despairing. It tX if i 8i 8 the cry of lost opportunity —the cry of the man who has learned his lesson too late ; of the man who locks his stable door after his best steed has been stolen ; of the man who sets about laying the keel of his ark only to find that the fast-rising flood is lapping his insteps. Unless our legislators wake up and set seriously about establishing a proper Forestry Department, placing it outside the reach of political pressure or wire-pulling, and regulate, on scientific and well-considered lines, the vital questions of cutting-out and replanting, we shall see repeated in New Zealand the woful experiences which, as indicated in ou 1' leading columns of last week, have followed the wholesale and wasteful destruction of forests in other lands.

on with many interruptions since the year of the Great Revolution, when M. Bkemontier began the vast operations which covered great tracts of shifting sand in the west of France with a thick belt of wealth -producing pinasters. In 1888 the acreage of the forests of France was greater by 7,000,000 acres than it was in 1848. ♦In that interval,' says Mulhall, 'no less than 9,000,000 acres of waste mountain lands have been planted, the increase of urban population causing a great demand for firewood, the consumption of which averages 23 cubic feet per inhabitant.' Between 1860 and 1888 over 300,000 acres' of flooddevastated land were, through the efforts of the Forestry Department, repeopled, at a cost of more than £2,000,000. The French Government also planted largely in Algeria, as many as 12,700,000 Australian blue-gums having been set on an area of 180,000 acres at Lake Fetzara. The Duke of Athol and the Earl of Seafield in Scotland, and Lord Powbrscouet in Wicklow (Ireland) are firm believers in the advice which the far-seeing old Scottish laird gave to his son : 'Be aye stickin' in a tree.' They are the most remarkable men in the revival of arboriculture in the British Isles. Lord Powercourt's expenditure of £3 6s per acre on tree-planting in 1866 has produced a vast plantation which in lyls will represent a value of £50 per acre. There's clearly money in this business.

In 1894, according to Mulhall, there were 34,500,000 acres of forest in Germany, which afforded a decent living to a great army of 380,000 wood-cutters — or one axe-man to about 90 acres of timber. The vast forest area of the United States — which was officially stated at 458,500,000 acres in 1894 — is being fast eaten up by the axe and the ' buzz-saw ' to the tune of about £215,000,000 worth of timber per annum, not counting the demon's work wrought by the action of the fire-stick. Norway and Sweden — according to the Foreign Office report of 1893 — possesses jointly 63,600,000 acres of forest-land ; and their Governments are protecting this splendid national asset by laws which New Zealand legislators would do well to study and adopt,. Ti.Saber-felling licenses there are issued only on conditions which provide for the systematic cutting-out in l rotation Mocks,' and equally systematic replanting. As a result, the forest areas never shrink, and a steady supply of timber ia kept up for hoj?e use and for export ; and tens of thousands of Swedes and^ Norwegians are eating the bread of com f ort that has been cvt — and we had almost said buttered on both sides — for them by the edge of their circular saws.

In a report sent to the Wellington Land Board in 1899, Commissioner Mr. W. J. A. Mauchmont said that 'the revenue derivable from the produce of the forests should more than recoup the cost of administration.' Elsewhere in the same report he said : ' Our indigenous forests are so extremely sensitive and subject to destruction that I au led to the conclusion that it will be difficult, even under the most stringent safeguards, to preserve them except in specially favorable localities. Nevertheless, no one can doubt that it is the duty of the Crown to do all in their power to postpone, or prevent altogether, euch a deplorable result. Likewise, arguing from analogy and altered conditions, in other counfcries j it seems ''nevitable that should there be widespread and generpl destruction of the forest, scrub, and coarse vegetation throughout the several districts, the loss to the Colony and community would be irreparable ; for the whole face of the country would be affected by the constant exposure to the rain and the sun ; the better portions of the soil being washed off the higher lands, the surfaces would become hardened and less fertile, and consequently the productive capabilities of the land would materially deteriorate. The exposed watersheds would tend to the drying up of the springs and water-courses, bringing disaster in the form of drought. On the other hand, the rapid distribution of rain-waters and their accumulation in rivulets and rivers would lead tothe washing down and removal of the soil from the mountains and hills, the scouring of channels, the flooding of low-lying lands, and the deposit of detritus thereon. Ib is unnecessary to revert again to all the important considerations which should spur the community by every means in its power to avoid such disastrous consequences as are indicated. It is sufficient here to say that,

under such conditions, the country would be afflicted and impoverished, and certainly wonld no longer be the beautiful and attractive region it now is.' And the moral of it all is this : that a live, energetic, and capable Forestry Department is, in a way, about as important for New Zealand as is our Ministry of Lands or our Ministry of Mines.