The Evils of Deforestation

[ILLUSTRATION]

TWO HUNDRED SQUARE MILES RUINED BY DEFORESTATION IN 150 YEARS. A sense of desolation in North China that will be paralleled sooner or later in every land that destroys its trees and refuses to replant them.

PREFACE.

THE following articles were originally written for the Auckland "Weekly Graphic," and are therefore intended to be of a descriptive and popular nature. I have not attempted to trouble my readers with large mases of statistics of with tehcnical terms and theories. I do not lay claim to any expect knowledge of Forestry, nor can I hope to add anything of serious importance to the large amount of valuable literature already produced on this subject. But I am profoundly convinced that the process of wholesale and reckless deforestation to which this country is being subjected will inevitably produce momentous and disasterous consequences, if we do not take warning in time from the teachings of Natural Science and the experience of older lands. And it happens that in New Zeaaldn those results of Deforestation which are to my mind of the most dangerous character are largely obscrured by considerations which are intrinsically far less serious. This fact is illustrated in the records of the Timber Commission which lately toured these islands. Whatever the nature of its report may prove to be, it is quite certain that most of the members and the vast majority of the witnesses examined were very much less interested in erosion and denudation and the climate results of Deforestation than in its effect upon the timber supply. In fact the casual reader glancing over the daily reports might well be excused for imaging that the chief questions involved in Deforestation are the market price of kauri and the consequences of importing Oregon pine. I do not deny the importance of these matters; and I have dealt at length with the timber supply in the following pages. But I have written these articles chiefly to draw public attention to those other aspects ofthe Deforestation problem which are usually ignored, not only by the general public, but also by those in authority over us; and my hope that something may be thus effect to stir public opinion on the subject has been strengthened by the wish experessed by some of the members of the Timber Commission that I should republish these "Graphic" articles in a more compact and durable form.

Auckland University College, September, 1909.

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[Illustration]

The Passing of the Bush

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