West Coast reserves report due this week

Press, 27 March 1979, Page 20

West Coast reserves report due this week

By

OLIVER RIDDELL

in Wellington

On March 31, the officials committee set up to review reserve proposals for West Coast forests is to report to the Minister of Forests (Mr V. S. Young). This officials committee was established by the Cabinet in August last year after a milling moratorium had been placed by th* Government on wide stretches of forest west of the Southern Alps. Even before it had held its first meeting, the committee was caught in a crossfire between conservation and milling interests; it has continued to work in this uncomfortable situation. It is certain that whatever it recommends to the Minister, neither conservation nor milling interests will be satisfied. The officials committee comprised two representatives (including its chairman) from the Forest Service, two from the Ministry of Works and Development, and one each from the Lands and Survey Department, Commission for the Environment, Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, th*- Mines Division of the Ministry of Energy, and the Government’s Scientific Coordinating Committee. The tracts of forest considered by the officials committee were basically those recommender for reserve status by the Scientific Coordinating Committee in 1977, but there were some other areas as well. The coordinating committee had looked at reserve proposals from many agencies, including much more sweeping proposals from the Wildlife Service than were ultimately recommended. Criticism arose after the co-ordinating committee had made its recommendations. It was accused by conservation interests, both within and without the Public Service, of failing to include sufficient lowland forests and of omitting sections of forest which might later be incorporated into national parks. But it was also criticised bv the Conservators of Forests in Nelson and the West Coast for seeking to lock up too much valuable and exploitable indigenous forest. The social /and economic consequences for the West Coast o' doing this were not pleasant to contemplate. The officials committee ►•• s not been able to shift ' - the recommend-

ations of the Scientific Coordinating Committee’s recommendations because of its terms of reference. These had the effect of designating the co-ordinating committee’s recommendations now under the milling moratorium as a maximum area that could be reserved. The three terms of reference were : —

1. To arrange for the relevant parent departments to complete studies by January 31, 1979, of the potential for minerals, water development, farming, and forestry development within the proposed reserves subject to the moratorium. The farming study will be part of a wider investigation of the extent of farmable lands at present under forests.

2. Using the information derived from studies in (I) and other relevant and available information, to investigate, in relation to total land use patterns, the social, economic and environmental impacts of creating the proposed reserves and to balance these impacts against the scientific, aesthetic, recreational and environmental values that could be protected by reservation.

3. To recommend to the Minister of Forests before, March 31, 1979, those specific areas which the officials committee considers should be set aside as reserves, having taken into account the aspects listed in (2). Where the officials committee consider that alternation or deletions should be made to the proposed reserves, considerations of the Scientific Co-ordinating Committee were to be used in an effort to achieve a balance, a compromise, and it is not expected that the officials committee will stray far from them. No-one really expects the officials committee to make any startling new departures. But any changes to the recommendations of the Scientific Co-ordinating Committee can really only be to reduce them, given that the area of forest under moratorium has been designated a maximum.

Conservationists would be unwise to expect further tracts of forest to be set aside by the officials committee in addition to those already under moratorium.