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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 3, Issue 11 (March 1, 1929)

Mountain, Forest, and Rainfall

Mountain, Forest, and Rainfall.

The white settler of Taranaki, too, has come to love the grand old mountain. His affection is perhaps of the more practical kind, as voiced by a member of the Egmont County Council recently. Roused to indignation by the report that some holiday-makers from New Plymouth were in the habit of setting fire to big rata trees on the mountain slopes—just to see by the column of smoke how far they had been, when they came out again—this member said: “The people of Taranaki should realise that the forest on the mountain sides is like gold to them; it is responsible for the rainfall.”

Perhaps he would have put it more accurately had he said it was responsible for the conservation of the rainfall, but the broad fact remains— page 38 it is to the mountain and its forests that Taranaki province owes its fertility and wealth.