Selective logging at its best

Press, 29 August 1979, Page 21

Selective logging at its best

continuance of Minginui village. A management plant for the forest is now the subject of public debate, and will control forest activities until March 31, 1989. It provides that exotic logs be made available from Whirinaki in partial substitution for indigenous logs under contract to the Minninui mill. In 1981, the 30,000 cubic metres of wooa provided will be t w o-thirds indigenous, one-third exotic; in 1985, the proportions will be reversed; and by 1989 the 35,000 cub metres supplied will be 30,000 exotic logs and 5000 indigenous.

There are three main trail types — taking out individual trees beside the logging track, groups of trees with clumped crowns that can fall on the one site and let in the light, and taking out a key tree and then cutting out trees around it to fall on the spot where it came from. The result is selective logging at its best. The wasteland that invariably accompanies logging of any description has been kept to a minimum and the logging tracks were the best I have seen, with only rare breaks in the were able to predict eeltree canopy above them.

The trials work out at about three clumps per hectare.

Dead and dying trees are not taken; they provide the best shelter and food for wildlife, and humus for the soil. There was very little windthrow evident. Log tracks are designed to minimize logbrush against standing trees or the disturbance of root plates. Dave Hilliard, second-in-charge of Whirinaki Forest, was the guide for the tour. The sites chosen and shown displayed no visible disturbance within a few feet of where logging was taking place. And he said there would be no more logging near the trail sites for 40 or 50 years. Miro is not cut if it can be avoided, because it is preferred feeding for much of the wildlife.

“The Forest Service Is convinced that by its selective logging processes it can create and manage multi-age stands of podocarps,” Mr Hilliard says. “Seedings are planted within days of logging. Scars to the ground where logs have been dragged are inevitable, but we have reduced their number and width to the minimum."

(Tomorrow: What is the solution to the forest controversy and who will impose it?)