Coast reserve proposals

Press, 24 February 1987, Page 33

Coast reserve proposals

PA Greymouth More than 100,000 hectares of indigenous forest and wetlands between the Cook and Arawata rivers in South Westland have been identified as having reserve potential. The eight areas, spread between the Karangarua, Paringa and Haast ecological areas, were identified to the South Westland management evaluation programme forum in Hokitika by a Forest Service botanist, Mr Henk

Stengs. The proposal, if agreed to, would give virtual blanket reserve cover to 102,200 hectares of Crown-owned land, excluding only areas at Makawhio (Jacobs River), between the Okuru and Waiatoto rivers, and Maori lands in between.

Mr Stengs told the forum that these eight areas represented possibly the only area in New Zealand where extensive, unmodified lowland forests still re-

mained. The director of the Royal Forest and Bird Society, Dr Gerry McSweeney, said that the conservation opportunity in South Westland differed from that elsewhere in New Zealand.

In other areas reserves were laid out to “pick up the scraps,” after 120 years of development, whereas in South Westland there was an opportunity to protect large areas of untouched forests, he said.