327 



We have for years been unthinkingly cutting- ofif our forests 

 for firewood ; devastating them with cattle ; carelessly allow- 

 ing their destruction by wild goats, and paying practically no 

 attention to reforesting; while we have imported not only all 

 kinds of both soft and hardwood, both manufactured and un- 

 manufactured, for general domestic use, but have also been 

 importing even our railroad ties, telephone poles and fence 

 posts. 



Within the year we have been brought up against the fact 

 that not only have prices gone ballooning, but that even rail- 

 road ties and fence posts are hard to obtain even at the 

 advanced prices. If prices of lumber in general, and hard- 

 wood in particular, are going to be prohibitory in the United 

 States, where the material is produced, they are going to be 

 more so here, where the added freight must be reckoned with. 



THE REMEDY IN HAWAII. 



What is the remedy? 



There is and can be only one remedy. It is the same here 

 that it is in the United States, and the same there that it was 

 in Europe when they faced the same condition a hundred 

 years ago. 



The remedy is to stop unnecessary destruction of forests 

 and immediately begin reforestation, both by protection of 

 semi-forested areas, so that partly destroyed forests will re- 

 turn by natural means ; and by replanting. 



This should be done both through the medium of private 

 effort and public appropriation. 



It lies within the power of every sugar plantation and every 

 cattle ranch in the Territory to, within the year, at an expense 

 so small that it bears no comparison to the benefits to be 

 derived, shut out cattle from every portion of the land which 

 ought to be in forest, and, if no more is done, to plant along 

 roadways, around house-lots, in gulches, waste land and on 

 steep hill sides unsuitable for agriculture, trees enough to, 

 within the next ten years, supply a very large proportion, 

 if not the whole of the* fence posts, railroad ties, telephone 

 poles and firewood needed for consumption in the Territor}^ 



RAPID GROWING HARDWOODS. 



The few years during which there has been a skeleton of a 

 forestry department maintained by the government in Ha- 

 waii has demonstrated that we have available a highly valu- 

 able assortment of rapid growing hardwood trees, such as a 

 number of the varieties of the eucalypti, the iron woods, the 

 silver oak and some of the acacias, besides that most valuable 

 lumber tree, the Japanese pine. 



