FOREST CONSERVATION

I was much interested in a picture of a woodland scene shown in the “Advocate” two weeks ago, presumably a sugar-place- a pretty scene all right and one that might rightfully belong to a park, but pathetic when viewed from nature’s standpoint and man’s failure to grasp the intent of the all-wise Power guiding his destinies. Desecration! Can I choose a better word to express man’s heedless, senseless management of what he thinks to be his own affairs. I sometimes wonder that our punishment is not more severe. But how many of us come, tarry, and pass on, all unknowing that we, or, at least, the race through us have been pushed to an extent inestimable.

Oh, why will our wise men not learn wisdom! Why will not our representatives, men chosen in the supposition of being our best, not try and protect what a generous nature not only has provided but is still providing. But I am wandering, from the point I started to touch, in my indignation at the non-conservation of our forests.

The particular grievance that your illustration called to mind was the destruction of our sugar-places. How often do we hear the farmer mourning about the failure of his trees to produce; that they are dying; that he believes he will cut them down and sell them for wood. Now this same man would feel very sore if you told him he was a fool and apparently incapable of improvement, but such he is- we all are, and our case looks well nigh hopeless. Now, for pity sake, let us stop; let us begin the protection of our forest, our wood-lot, and particularly our sugar places. It is very simple and a half dozen words tell the remedy, but it will take nature many years to undo what we and our fathers have carelessly allowed to take place. It may have been proper for them when the country was new, when every energy was centred on the clearing of the soil for the production of sustenance, to graze down the grown vegetation, but that day has long passed- still the vicious habit clings.

When I saw your illustration I thought to myself why was I not thoughtful enough ten years ago to have brought the camera into play, and to-day I might have been able to give you some idea of what your illustration would show ten years hence. Ten years ago I studied this same situation over, and for experiment fenced out from my pasture practically all of my woodland, leaving only sufficient for shade to the stock. True, I lost much feed- many things that the cattle love among the woodland herbage, but ten years have shown what nature will do if we but give her a chance, not only in replacing the young shoots but in reclaiming the mature trees when once their roots are safe from the countless hoof-beats of horses and cattle. They seem to have taken a new lease of life, and the scene to-day would be hardly recognized as that of ten years ago.

I would like to touch our lumbermen in a vital spot; I would like to kick our legislators, somewhere, for not knowing Canada has interests to be safeguarded, not only from foreign exploiters but from ourselves. Look about our hills to-day and see the naked rocks stand glistening in the sun- monuments of the ruinous forest fires of some ten years ago, whose origin, due to carelessness of hunters and others, was scarcely to be unexpected among the fire-traps prepared by heedless and wasteful lumbermen. But even then the situation might have been saved had we been prepared- had we had a system and laws to enforce the same. Think what a ranger of any certain district might have accomplished with the law behind him, the power to call out every available man in his district, if need be, to check a fire. But as I said, it needs system. It needs organization, Of course, there would be expense, but dollars saved are dollars earned, and the man called from his, perhaps, necessary employment to protect the wealth of the public at large is very nearly in the same category as the soldier who goes to the front.

But think it over, you farmers at least who aspire to sit in legislative halls. Words may not come as readily to your lips as to those of your lawyer neighbor, but what does he know of the country’s needs? The muscles he has been trained to use are only those that produce sound, and many a beneficial measure has been drowned in its senseless volume.

Que.
E. C. Barnett