Waipoua Petition Well Launched

Northern Advocate, 17 June 1947, Page 3

Waipoua Petition Well Launched

THE launching of the petition for the preservation of Waipoua forest and its declaration as a national park was successfully accomplished at Whangarei last night. Five speakers, headed by the director of the Auckland Institute and Museum (Dr Gilbert Archey, M.A., I).Sc.) and Mr W. It. McGregor, lecturer in zoology at the Auckland University, addressed a public meeting held at the Town Hall for the purpose of inaugurating the petition

The addresses were closely I 000, including a number of local fives of various interested orgar thy listeners were women.

'ollowed by an audience of about body members and represent filiations. A good percentage of

As the principal speakers, Dr Archey and Mr McGregor each presented a series of concise and conclusive arguments for the preservation of Waipoua. The Mayor (Mr W. Jones) presided. Dr Archey complimented the State Forest Service for consistently pursuing a policy in accordance with its responsibilities. "I do not question that the department can do the things it claims it can do or that what they plan to do will have the results they claim," he said.

“Is the maximum number of trees in a given area an alluring prospect?” Dr Archey asked. Such a result, he said, would not be the regeneration of a forest, but the production of a plantation. “Having obtained our plantation, what next?

"You will have sustained your yield, and what you have sustained will in time have to yield to the axe.

“The sustained yield policy does not require production of the splendid crowned heads of the forest giants,” he continued.

The department's policy was aimed at the management of the forest to provide an immediate supply of . cut timber and to provide future supplies in perpetuity. The sustained yield was the keystone of the department's policy. Yield meant consumption, milling and cutting, and a sustained yield meant cutting at definitely repeated intervals.

According to the dimensions set by the department for millable trees, kauris became millable when they were passing out of the rika stage. Dr Archey contended that the de» partmental policy would produce an even, uniform stand of rikas. “It is from the necessary outcome of that policy that we must save Waipoua. "It is inevitable that no forest giants will be regenerating, as when the new trees reach the rika stage they will be cut down.” The large and historic trees now standing in the forest would be preserved but they would die one by one arid, in several years, nothing but rikas would be left. “The State Forest Service’s resoonsibility is a commercial one. It would keep every acre covered with trees end would contribute to New Zealand's prosperity, but \vc do not want that," he said.

“Such a policy requires that regeneration shall take place, that seedlings shall'rise in cut-over areas, that they shall grow to saplings and eventually to maturity.

“Let us assume the best and the most favourable aspects of the State Forest Service case. I am prepared to concede seedlings will spring up in a cut-over area and that they will grow to saplings. It may reasonably be argued that they will grow into trees. “A properly-managed forest will grow more trees to a given area than nature ever considered wise to plant in the same area.