Opponents ‘dismayed’

Press, 31 October 1979, Page 21

Opponents ‘dismayed’

“We are astounded and dismayed that the Forest Service is going to log the Waitahu Valley and the west bank of the Maruia River,” says Mr Craig Potton, a research officer for the Native Forests Action Council.

“These are beautiful montane valleys in the heart of our beach forests, and to log them is to fly in the face of overwhelming public support for the Maruia Declaration.

“These proposals only highlight the problem of forest parks where the best wanner lowland forests, which are so essential to our native birds, are destroyed under the facade of the multiple-use philosophy. “Conservationists have researched and worked very hard to present reserve proposals on the future of West Coast forests to the Minister of Forests (Mr Venn Young) that allow enough wood outside of them to keep the mills going. But they have only done this in the

good faith that their compromises are met with the assurance of reserving the Maruio and other montane valleys. “The forests of these valleys are of national and international significance and must be kept free of short-term exploitation.”

Mr Potton says the Native Forests Action Council accepted beech logging for the West Coast for two reasons — to keep the sawmilling industry alive, and because the Forest Service said that beech logging would relieve pressure on the remaining podocarp (rimu and kahikatea) forests. “We accept that logging should be done in the Inangahua and Grey valleys, but we do not accept that beech should be logged in the montane valleys —

Maruia, the upper Grey, Glenroy, Matakitaki, and Deepdale,” he says. “They are the last examples of what, is left of our good red beech, botanically speaking. And they support good numbers of native birds —

robins, riflemen and tui, as well as good numbers of parakeet and some kaka. Scenically and recreationally these montane valleys' are of better value than the valleys over the hill.” Mr Potton says it astounds him that the Forest Service should talk about logging being compatible with recreation. "Anyone going into a beech logged area will find that it's not.”

"This is not selective logging. Their beech logging technique is called shelterwood logging. They tried a technique of leaving seed trees, but this did not work because of com petition from weeds and the loss of seed trees by windfall.

“Now they have turned to shelterwood logging in which they leave about 40 per cent of the trees as a canopy. They wait until there has been a good seed fall, let the young trees grow to three or four feet, then take out the rest of the mature trees.

“It’s a very new technique; it’s been going for only two years, so we don’t know w'hat the results will be. But both methods devastate the landscape. In some areas there has been no regrowth at all.” Mr Potton says his council regards it as very important to include some of the lowland beech forests in national parks. If the Glenroy and Matakitaki valley floors were added to the Nelson Lakes National Park, as proposed in the Lands and Survey Department’s study, they would increase the amount of warm, flat, lowland forest in the park by 87 per cent.

“Ecologically, the flat, warm, lowland forest areas are without doubt the most important as wintering over areas for the bird populations,” he says. “They are utterly dependent on them to survive the winter. Yet these are the very areas which, in so many places, they are logging.”