Maori forests at risk, says owner

Press, 11 September 1986, Page 14

Maori forests at risk, says owner

PA Tauranga Maori forest owners could risk losing their land because of the forestry downturn and the dispute at Kawerau, says a Tauranga business consultant and Maori forestry block owner, Mr Jim Gray. Mr Gray said most Maori blocks in the Bay of Plenty and Rotorua areas had been put into pine to supply the mill at Kawerau. But he warned that Maori tribal trusts could face foreclosure or mortgagee sales if the viability of the blocks fell because of reduced payments for logged pine or demands from the forestry com-

panies for repayment of development costs. “If we are to believe what Tasman says, that it is uneconomic to produce timber products under the existing economic regime, then we have to ask ourselves how they are going to make it economic,” Mr Gray said. “Fletchers have said the removal of export incentives has been a major factor in the mill’s present difficulties. The companies therefore must reduce their costs to allow for profitable exports. “They can attack the cost of the trees or they can attack the cost of labour in their plant.

“Maori owners should be aware the easiest way to reduce costs is to screw down timber prices paid to the Maori blocks.” Mr Gray said most of the timber grown outside state control came from Maori land blocks. "The State forests sell their timber virtually at cost — so the Maori owners are competing against a potentially unfair supplier,” he said. “Even with the advent of the new forestry corporation the real profits in the timber industry will still come from processing, not from the growing side, so the Maori owners will continue to miss out.” Mr Gray said that in a worst-case scenario there was a real chance that the Maori owners could lose their land through forced mortgagee sales by forestry companies. “Many of the Maori blocks went in to pine’ forests not to make vast sums of money, but simply to preserve their land from forced sales from continual rates demands on unused bush,” he said. “Now it appears that in undertaking forestry development they may actually be worse off because they have run up a far greater debt burden than just rates. “I think we must very strongly question the people who advocate that Maoris put their land into exotic forests — and in particular the Department

of Maori Affairs and the Minister of Forests, Mr Wetere, who has been actively promoting pinus radiata development.” Mr Gray said the Maori blocks would be better to concentrate on selective logging of native timber, which was now in strong demand throughout the Western world for topquality furniture. Such logging of natives would be in combination with a’ sustained planting programme of three native trees for each one felled. The chairman of one Tauranga block in pine, Mr Vic Smith, of the Ngamanawa Incorporation, said the Tasman dispute had come as a bombshell. He was worried about the future viability of the block. “As Maori owners, we were faced with a Hobson’s choice — either we lost our land through rates demands because the native forests were not being used, or we leased the land to forestry companies and tried to get a return through profit sharing,” he said. “We entered a profitsharing agreement with a forestry company.” Mr Smith said that while this company was not directly involved in the Kawerau dispute, he feared that the competition from cheaper overseas producers such as Chile would create severe economic pressures on the Maori block.