Salient. An Organ of Student Opinion at Victoria College, Wellington, N.Z. Vol. 9, No. 11. August 21, 1946

Soil Conservatism

Soil Conservatism

On Thursday, August 8, four films on soil conservation were shown in C3. Despite the large amount of advance advertising, there were not so many students present as there should have been. This display of apathy is characteristic of the present generation, which has been brought up to regard scarred hillsides and deer-ruined forests as part of every New Zealand landscape. The films soon corrected this complacent attitude with a few shots of the end-products of erosion.

The longest film and by far the best produced was "The River," an American documentary made in conjunction with the TVA. It is the history of the Mississippi and the terrible floods caused by the removal of water-absorbing forests from vast areas of land around the source of the river. The Americans were the first to really do something about soil erosion, and this film is certainly a classic documentary on the subject.

The other films were made in New Zealand and were in dubious techni-horror; however, in spite of this, many of the shots taken were nothing short of staggering in their depiction of large tracts of land utterly devoid of topsoil, due to burning-off followed by bad agricultural methods. One film showed the Molesworth Station in Marlborough, which has been ruined by private enterprise, and the experiments which are being carried out by the State to bring the land back into production. Several thousand acres have already been restored, but it is a long and costly job. Another film, taken in Hawkes Bay mostly in or about the Eskdale Valley district, gave a very clear picture of the scarred hill country which is now characteristic of the area. In some parts of the Eskdale Valley so much topsoil has been washed away that only a few naked pillars of earth remain to show how much is gone.

Much of the present destruction of forest and pasture is due to the ever-increasing population of deer and rabbits. The last film gave some figures on the number of deer and rabbits killed in the last few years, but it is evident that the probelm has hardly been touched upon. Scientific extermination of one area after another is the only way to deal with this problem and the ordinary deerstalker or rub-biter is not equipped sufficiently to do this.

The Soil Conservation and River Control Boards are to be congratulated on the excellent job they are doing in making known the urgent need for soil conservation in New Zealand.

* * *

Women who wobble
Get men into twobble.