Native forests may be lost to Forest Service

Press, 31 May 1985, Page 14

Native forests may be lost to Forest Service

By

OLIVER RIDDELL

in Wellington

Plans to reshuffle land development and conservation in New Zealand, and to deprive the Forest Service of responsibility for indigenous forests, are contained in a confidential report being considered by the Government. This report is the work of a working party set up by the Government earlier this year to look at environmental administration in New Zealand. Its effect would be to separate Government agencies developing and conserving land in New Zealand. It recommends comprehensive changes in the way functions that are the responsibility now of the Ministry of Works, the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, the Department of Internal Affairs, the Forest Service, the Lands and Survey Department, the Commission for the Environment, and other agencies, would be carried out in future. Although still confidential, word of this report and its contents is already creating a storm of protest among those likely to be affected if the Government accepts its recommendations.

In a recent address, the

director-general of the Forest Service, Mr Andy Kirkland, spoke of a campaign designed to “undermine public confidence in Forest Service administration of native forests.”

The secretary of the Workers’ Union, Mr Dan Duggan, has threatened to meet the proposals with industrial action by his forestry worker members.

The director of forest management in the Forest Service, Mr Robin Cutler, spoke of efforts by conservationists “to wreck the Forest Service.” But the chairman of the Environment and Conservation Organisation, Ms Cath Wallace, speaking for her national alliance of 68 groups with a concern for the environment, accused Mr Kirkland on being intent on preserving “his bureaucratic empire and not native forests.”

New Zealand’s biggest single conservation group,

the 43,000 member Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society, said the Forest Service had only itself to blame for the public’s lack of confidence in it.

Responding to a claim by Mr Kirkland that the Forest Service had been “subject to some kind of kangaroo court,” the society said the Forest Service had had 10 years in which to prove its case (over indigenous forests) and had failed.

This in turn led the president of the Public Service Association, Mr Colin Hicks, to say it was totally unacceptable that “certain individuals in their lobbying efforts to achieve changes in Government policy” should launch “explicit and unwarranted attacks on public servants.” But the proposals to take management of indigenous forests from the Forest Service is only one of a host of linked proposals in the report.

The working party said

the chief principle which guided it was the ethical shift from the historic emphasis on development to the integration of conservation and development. Protection of the nation's heritage should be reflected in a new system of environmental administration, it said.

Public perceptions of conflicts and inconsistencies in the roles and functions of existing Government agencies responsible for the planning and management of resources had to be considered when rationalising their roles and functions. The report saw’ two main gaps in the way the environment was handled: First, there was no single strong advocate for care of the environment and balance in the way resources were used. Second, there w’as no single strong advocate for the presentation of what was naturally or historically important.