HONG KONG ANNUAL REPORT. 1953
siderations a new forest policy was drafted during the year and was accepted by Government in November, as the future policy of the Forestry Division. The most important outcome of the new policy is that afforestation of the catchment areas and waste hill lands will be carried out more extensively and during the next five years it is planned to plant 1,000 acres a year. In addition help and assistance will be given to the villagers throughout the New Territories to plant and manage their forestry lots.
At the same time as these plans for future forestry work were being drawn up, actual afforestation work was being carried out and over 300 acres of new plantations were formed during the year, mostly in the water catchment areas. In the new catchment area at Tai Lam Chung the most urgent need was to establish forest on the badly eroded areas. Work had been started in 1952, by seeding pine over all the barren areas. The results of this were fairly good and millions of pine seedlings were successfully established, but they were not evenly distributed as the seed had often been blown off the barren ridges by wind, or washed away by torrential rain. During 1953, several hundred thousand pine seedlings were planted in these blank areas, but large areas still remained to be treated. In grass areas, Eucalyptus plantations were formed and have been very successful. Considerable areas were also planted in the catchment area of the Jubilee reservoir at Shing Mun. A number of subsidiary nurseries were started in several of the forest areas and very large stocks of plants raised for planting in 1954.
In the Sai Kung area the scheme of assistance to village forestry was continued. Under this scheme the villagers are helped to form plantations for their own use. Seed and plants are provided but the planting is done by the villagers themselves supervised by the staff of the Forestry Division. In this way the villagers are gradually being taught sound forestry practice.
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