Logging halt ordered in Reefton area

Press, 24 April 1986, Page 2

Logging halt ordered in Reefton area

By

OLIVER RIDDELL

in Wellington The Government has ordered an immediate halt to clear-felling operations in the proposed wildlife corridor in the native forests near Reefton. The decision follows on months of pressure by the Joint Campaign on Native Forests which said that logging in the area was destroying the proposed corridors before any decision had been made on whether to implement them. No more clear-felling will be permitted until a final decision has been taken on whether to implement the proposal. Both the Undersecretary of Forests, Mr Butcher, and the Undersecretary for the Environment, Mr Woollaston, have been involved in the row. They said clear-felling work for combined sawlog and beechchip production had been done by the Forest Service in the Slab Hut Creek and Giles Creek areas. Logging at Slab Hut Creek had stopped after an inspection by Mr Woollaston two weeks ago, but had continued at Giles Creek. The Forest Service

would continue to meet its contractual obligations to provide both saw logs and chip logs, the Undersecretaries said. These would now be obtained from areas less environmentally sensitive. The proposal for a wildlife * corridor, linking a series of reserves and ecological areas from the Paparoa Ranges to the foothills of the Southern Alps, had first been made by the Wildlife Service in 1976. It had been largely ignored and areas of the corridor had been zoned for forestry production in the management plan approved by the then National Government. They committed the Government to examine the wildlife corridor proposal now in the context of a package of reserves and production areas on the West Coast. Clearfelling would jeopardise that commitment In the immediate future, the Forest Service was expected to meet its commitment for beech chip logs from cut-over forest at Station Creek near Maruia. Existing contracts for rimu sawlogs would be met from the Merrijigs area on the eastern boundary of the proposed corridor.