Preserving Our South Pacific Forests

Fire and the Plough Cause More Havoc Than the Miller

TIMBER, once regarded as a cheap building material, can no longer be regarded as such. So valuable has it become that eyes are now turning to the once inaccessible (and therefore un economic) areas of the Pacific. Timber was exported from New Caledonia, certain islands of the New Hebrides group, Vani koro, and from New Guinea before the war—but most of it was for cabinet mak ing or some other specific purpose. Now the demand is for good, plain building timber for local use as well as for export.

The greatest potential supplier of build ing timber is New Guinea, but here authority appears to have Adopted a woodman-spare-that-tree attitude that has done nothing, as yet, to alleviate the timber-hunger of the Territory itself or of Australia.

With the man-made deserts of other countries for example, this official reluct ance to give timber-millers a free hand is not surprising. But there is little evidence to support the view that milling, of itself, causes the deserts —even without any assistance from man, seedling trees spring up where the parent trees have been felled.

It is the agriculturist and grazier with their passion for rooting out the timber, for burning off, so that they may plough or graze their stock, that has reduced one half of the earth to useless, barren wastes.

The problems of forestry in the islands of the South Pa-cific are basically similar yet there appears to be wide practical differences in the approach made by the

various territories towards their timber areas.

In Papua-New Guinea, where there are valuable forests and many sawmillers avid to work them, we have a Director of Forests of whom it is said that he loves each tree individually and would rather have a tooth drawn than have one felled In Fiji, however, the Conservator of Forests goes on record to urge local con sumers to overcome their prejudice in favour of North American softwoods and Australian hardwoods and induce saw milllers to exploit the natural timbers of Fiji.

Although little has been done to utilise the timber resources of Fiji, that Colony appears to have a reafforestation and erosion problem much greater than that of N. Guinea—mainly through introduced factors impinging on the native Fijian methods of agriculture.

In a paper read to the Seventh Pacific Science Congress in Auckland last year Fiji Conservator of Forests, Mr. J. C k’

Marshall, makes a survey of forestry problems in the South Pacific area and deals with Fiji in particular. The full paper was printed in a recent issue of the Fiji Agricultural Gazette, but in view of the present shortage of timber— especially in the southern hemisphere— the points Mr. Marshall makes are worth repeating here.

Man, the Land’s Enemy

IT would not be exaggerating, he says, to state that 50 per cent, of the world’s land productivity has been

destroyed by man with his astonishing ability to overcrop, ovegraze and denude of all tree life. Nor has this destruction ceased, although most governments are aware of the consequences; more and more land is being destroyed each day by faulty management. The only factor that seems to stand between this total destruction of forest lands appears to be foresters who, Mr. Marshall says, “have been trained to take a detached altruistic

view of our forest estate. We plant so that someone, of what race or nation we know not, may reap in 100 years and may have a better life.”

In the south Pacific, land was shielded from the dangers of the Euro-Asiatic way of life that had turned Mesopotamia, Egypt, vast areas of India and China, and even America into deserts or dust bowls, until about the beginning of the 19th century. But in the 150 years since, damage has been considerable.

First came the sandalwood gatherers,

who ruthlessly tore out this valuable timber until to-day virtually no specimen remains in the lands of the S-W Pacific.

The cream of the coastal Kauri forests probably went also at this time.

Then came the cash economy in place of primitive village agriculture, which concentrated people around the large centres. Mr. Marshall here quotes Suva, with its steep sided hills where the orig inal two or three feet of soil was laid down on mudstone —locally called soap stone. It was cropped by market garden

ers until the topsoil was eroded—but the market gardeners dismissed the tragedy as “the soapstone coming to the surface” and as the area became more unproduc tive, they cut back the forest still further to grow their crops on other virgin land.

In the case of Fiji, the problem of denuding the land was increased with the introduction of Indians, for in the settling of these folk in Fiji lies the root of most of the misuse of Fiji land today.

They came from a land which had been over-cropped for centuries in order to provide a bare existence for the teeming millions and their scraggy sacred cattle.

They saw nothing strange or wrong in erosion and proceeded to treat the fertile, virgin land of Fiji as countless numbers of their ancestors had treated the land of Mother India.

Another new factor was introduced in herds of grazing cattle, to provide grass for which both Fijians and Indians cleared and burnt areas of forest. To the Hindu and other Indians, the cow is sacred and they may not kill one. Having intro duced their cattle they let them multiply without hindrance and as the Indians may have only an acre or two they are compelled to seek free range which they obtain by burning old, abandoned Fijian gardens.

Cut the Bush and “Improve”

The Land

SETTLERS in new lands, says Mr.

Marshall caustically, usually regard the timber as an enemy. They talk about “improving the land” by clear ing the bush—and when they have “im proved” it to the utmost, they have a desert. With the disappearance of trees the climate changes—approaching rain clouds are possibly dissipated by reflec tion of heat from bare hills and sandy

beaches and this results in droughts where formerly there was adequate rainfall.

Then civilized man in his dseire for commerce, interferes with nature. Hard upon the introduction of specialized crops to former forest areas, come specialized pests to prey upon them.

In Fiji rats were introduced accident ally and wrought havoc in the cane fields.

The Indian mongoose was introduced to deal with the rats, which it did, but it also cleaned out the natural ground nesting birds—birds which, presumably, had much to do with the propagation of certain forest seeds.

The interference of man with nature has far-reaching consequences; so, also, has the march of what we are pleased to call civilization. The Malayan village which formerly left a strip of forest along the river banks to hide it and its gardens from river pirates, began cultivating to the stream’s edge when British government brought fear of pirates to an end. De prived of the protection of the tree roots, the banks caved in and the rivers silted up, until today virtually all of the streams in the country are useless for transportation. Laws have been passed to prevent the clearing of river banks— but the penalties are light and do not deter as in the old days the penalty of an unpleasant death at the hands of pirates deterred.

Milling Need Not Be a National

Tragedy

AGAINST this background of what has been done to despoil the forest areas, Mr. Marshall tells us how we should use our forest assets, and how it is pos sible to tackle the job of reafforestation in a native community. Mr. Marshall puts aside the popular idea that a forest reserve is an area in which no one may fell trees, and that a Conservator of Forests is the official who sees that it is kept inviolate. He feels that it is not wrong to bring the virgin forests into production, for, in its virgin state, a forest is producing nothing towards world economy. If a forest is not ruthlessly exploited, but is tended properly, the volume of timber available per acre on :he maturity of the second crop, will be nuch more than that of the first natural forest.

He thinks that an organised timber ndustry in Fiji would not sound the leath knell of the forest lands, but, on the contrary, that this would be the solution :o reafforestation in the Colony which las already been denuded of a great deal )f its timber lands, not by a timber in iustry, but by the wastefulness and gnorance of those who have used the and —taking all, giving nothing.

He thinks that only when Fiji has a prosperous timber industry, able to con iribute to government revenue, will the country be able to afford the cost of re forestation of the now barren acres, rhe idea that a tree should be planted jefore the parent tree is felled does not ;eem to be borne-out in practice, at least is regards Pacific Kauri where seedlings ;eem to be killed off by competition from he parent tree.

The replanting of Fiji’s bare hillsides vhich should have been kept under forest, vould take a 100 years if the impossible ■arget of 300 acres per day were replanted n each day of the wet season. If the ;arget were reduced to 30 acres a day in ;he wet season, the scheme would take years and still cost more per annum ;han any Fiji government is likely to contemplate.

Instead of this impractical scheme, Mr.

Marshall suggests that a modified Bur nese Taung-Ya scheme be adopted,

wherein the native cultivators fell and burn the scrub for their gardens in the traditional way but are provided with seedling trees in bamboos which they plant at 6 ft. x 6 ft. or 10 ft. x 10 ft. intervals with their food crops. When the time comes for the garden to be abandoned for a new site, the Forestry Officer inspects and if a good proportion of the seedling trees have survived, the cultivators are paid at the rate of say, £2 per acre. By this means the typical South West Pacific method of native agri culture, called shifting cultivation, may become the standard method of reaffor estation.

Sir Maynard Hedstrom, of Fiji, is spend ing the summer months in New Zealand.