Manawatu Evening Standard. THURSDAY, SEPT. 19, 1929. A GOOD YEAR’S WORK.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLIX, Issue 249, 19 September 1929, Page 6

Manawatu Evening Standard. THURSDAY, SEPT. 19, 1929. A GOOD YEAR’S WORK.

Due more or less to the unemployment trouble and to the necessity for providing lighter forms of work for those unable to face the heavy manual labour involved in the construction of public works, the Eoiestry Department last year; employed more men than usual in tree-planting operations. The record disclosed in the departmental report gives evidence of a phenomenal increase in the acreage planted for forestry purposes, some 57,406 acres having been added to the area already planted. That area represents an increase of 22,300 acres on the total planted during 1927-28, and insofar as tree planting can be accepted as a reproductive work there is wisdom in extending the operations of the Forestry Department. The supplies of timber available in this country were rapidly diminishing when Sir Francis Bell took charge of the Forestry Department in 1918. There had been a certain amount of afforestation work carried out during the preceding years, but the importance of making provision for the needs of future generations had been almost completely overlooked. It was under Sir Francis that forestry was constituted into a separate department and that a definite move was made towards setting apart forest reserves and extending tree-planting operations. It had not escaped notice that the world’s timber supplies were fast being depleted, and that in the newer settled countries and those in course of settlement tree life had been ruthlessly and wastefully destroyed to make room for agricultural development, and it was necessary that steps should be taken to conserve the existing supplies of timber in such forests as had escaped destruction. And here the new department came into practical play with its planting operations to meet the future requirements of the country. There is evidence, however, that these operations are to a certain extent being nullified by the depredations of deer, which were originally imported for sporting purposes and have multiplied in the mountainous regions where our, principal forests are found to such an extent as to be-, come a positive nuisance, besides endangering the very existence of the forests themselves. If a choice has to be made between the deer and the forests, the latter must receive first consideration, for however fine and desirable a sport deer-stalking may .be, it is far more important that

our forests should be maintained intact than that we should endeavour to attract sportsmen from other countries by the prospect of securing days of so-called “glorious sport” in pursuit of five or seven or even twelve pointers over hill and valley with many an exciting chase.