Waitutu rescue plan in jeopardy

Press, 26 June 1984, Page 2

Waitutu rescue plan in jeopardy

By PATRICIA HERBERT, in Wellington

Conservationists’ hopes that the Government will intervene to prevent Feltex from logging in Southland’s Waitutu Forest may be dashed. The Prime Minister, Sir Robert Muldoon, said yesterday that he had received an official report which showed that “the environmental people” had seriously underestimated the cost of the rescue plan they had put to the Cabinet.

They are asking the Government to negotiate with the company and the owners of the land, the Waitutu Incorporation, to secure a three-way agreement under which the Crown makes alternative resources available to Feltex and compensates the incorporation for any loss provided that it in turn enters a covenant to permanently protect the forest. They put the cost of compensation at $1.3 million but Sir Robert said that the officcial report had quoted a figure of about $6 million and that this had created “some difficulties.”

However, he also said that the Cabinet had not yet made a firm decision on the proposal. Waitutu, which survived the Ice Ages, includes heavily timbered stands of rimu, totara, miro, silver birch and rata.