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REPORT

CHAPTER I.—FOREST POLICY 1. General Administration..—Emphasis on the maintenance of timber-supplies for essential purposes has continued throughout the year, but with the tapering-off of defence works it has been possible to devote more time to rehabilitation and post-war planning. Skeleton development and operational schemes covering all major rehabilitation forest projects for which land is available have been completed, and work commenced on a long-term twenty-five-year post-war policy plan covering all phases of both public and private forestry. 2. Recruitment and Training.—The policy has been continued of recruiting trainees from secondary schools, of affording them facilities for University training, and of giving rotational field experience on various classes of forest work during long University vacations. This is having the result of attracting a good class of applicant and of allowing the aptitude of recruits to be developed to the best effect and their training varied according to the dictates of their performance on forest works. With the effluxion of time the services of numerous field officers for the arduous duties of forest reconnaissance and timber cruising are no longer available and it is now necessary to recruit officers for this work from more senior men, preferably with a rural or bush background. Training courses for these recruits are being provided at the Forest Service Training Centre at the Whakarewarewa State Forest, Rotorua. A policy has also been adopted by the Government whereby departmental officers serving with the Armed Forces overseas are being afforded an opportunity of widening their experience by working with forest authorities of Allied Governments before returning to duty in New Zealand. 3. Indigenous-forest Resources.—Further study of the projected post-war national inventory indicates that, even with the aid of aerial photography, the field-work will occupy five years; but providing the basic data, as it will, for a fifty-year plan, of forest development and improvement, its importance cannot be overestimated, and the forthcoming training courses for timber appraisers will lay the foundations for building up the necessary field staff. The inventory will cover forest land of all tenures, and indicate the sufficiency or otherwise of supplementing exotic resources and assist in determining the rate at which in subsequent years it will be necessary and/or practicable to transfer timber-production from indigenous to exotic stands, 4. Indigenous-forest Management.—Owing to the shortage of suitable field staff, extensive forest reconnaissance has been severely restricted, but work has been concentrated upon the development of two areas from which supplies of logs can be made "available for a sufficiently long period as to warrant the establishment of modern milling, power, wasteburning, and kiln drying equipment and the provision of good housing accommodation and village amenities. Only the advent of war has prevented the earlier and more widespread adoption of such developments and their management under working-plan control. The development of a number of most undesirable practices and trends in the procurement of timber resources from both State- and Native-owned forests is discussed in Chapter VIII (page 13, paragraph 64), and Chapter XII (page 27, paragraph 108). 5. Indigenous Silviculture. —Continuing observations upon trial regeneration and cultural improvements in both kauri and beech forests arc serving to clarify the problem of treating extensive areas of these species in the post-war period. These species appear much more amenable to treatment than rimu, trials and observations of which must bo persevered with over very many years before any valid conclusions can be drawn. Seed crop and growth cycle reports on significant tree and shrub species are proving to be of ever-increasing importance in solving the numerous problems attached to the fundamental objective of converting the Dominion's characteristically stagnant forests into healthy productive stands. 6. Exotic-forest Resources. —Priority has been accorded to assessment surveys in all the older exotic forests, and results arc sufficiently advanced to be able to say that for the immediate post-war period there will be available for annual sale to private enterprise some 6,000,000 cubic feet of logs in the Rotorua Conservancy for conversion in economicsized units —primarily by log frame sawing, as demonstrated at the Forest Service Waipa Mill in the Whakarewarewa. State Forest. The departmental views on the limitation of its sawmilling activities to demonstration and key control units is reviewed in Chapter VIII (page 15, paragraph 69). 7. Exotic Silviculture. —Highlight of the year's experience has been the assured success of natural regeneration of insignis pine in the Whakarewarewa State Forest logging operations. As had been anticipated from observations elsewhere, natural regeneration was threatened for several years by Ilylastes ater, and this year's record of a further recession of the attack augurs well for the future management of the country's insignis-pine stands. Recording of seed crops and of growth-cycle observations on the principal exotic species have been continued as fundamental to the solution of silvicultural problems. 8. Local-body and Private Forestry.—The inevitable adaptation of exotic softwoods to building purposes is now becoming more widely appreciated, and the advantages attendant upon the creation and management of local exotic forests are winning recognition in timberless districts. A study of the means of encouraging both local bodies and farmers to establish exotic forests and woodlots, however, indicates the imperative necessity for any such resources being placed under such supervision as will ensure their protection and

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