MAORI SUPPORT FOR WAIPOUA AS A NATIONAL PARK

Greymouth Evening Star, 13 August 1947, Page 4

MAORI SUPPORT FOR WAIPOUA AS A NATIONAL PARK

(P.A.) AUCKLAND, This Day. When a motion urging the establishment of the Waipoua forest as a national park was put to a public meeting in the Auckland Town Hall an elderly Maori stood up and said: “This forest was ceded in 1876 by my great grandfather, Parore, to Queen Victoria. He strongly objected to the concession. The area of 32,000 acres was sold at Is Id an acre. The agreement must have meant that the forest be used for the benefit of the people, otherwise my great grandfather never would have signed it.” The speaker was Lou Parore, of Dargaville, who said he was taking among his own people a petition similar to that of the Waipoua Preservation Committee, under whose auspices the Town Hall meeting was held. The following resolution was passed: “This meeting of Auckland citizens calls on the Government to cease all commercial operations in the Waipoua forest and to declare the whole area a national park under a board of trustees, which will preserve the forest in its primeval state for the enjoyment of the people for all time.”