WARAWARA STATE FOREST

Forest and Bird, Issue 149, 1 August 1963, Page 7

WARAWARA STATE FOREST

There has been some newspaper correspondence and agitation about the proposal to log some of the kauri stands in the Warawara Forest, and it will be of interest to readers to know what and where this place is. Warawara Forest was bought by the Crown and made State forest in 1886. It covers an area of almost 17,000 acres near the west coast of Northland between the Hokianga and Whangape harbours. From Mangamuka Bridge, on the main north highway between Kaikohe and Kaitaia, country roads lead to Pawarenga to the north of the forest, and to Pangaru and Mitimiti to the south. As yet

there is no road access to the forest itself.

Some two-thirds of the forest is on steep, hilly country, rising to over 2,000 ft. and is protection forest which will not be cut. On a swampy plateau at over 1,500 ft. on the western or seaward side of the forest are three groups of kauri of considerable extent which, with the surrounding podocarp forest, could be logged. Hitherto, conservation policy, together with the inaccessibility of the timber, has kept out the loggers, but not, unfortunately, the gum bleeders, who have severely damaged many of the standing trees. But recently the need for employment in this

isolated locality, together with the increasing shortage of kauri timber, has led to pressure to have this timber milled.

The Government investigated all aspects of the proposal and finally decided that operations on a limited scale would be permitted. Forest Service inspections revealed that some trees had been killed and others damaged through the activities of gum bleeders. Over a long period (at least 50 years), kauri trees that are dead and damaged, or malformed and over-mature, will be selected for removal. Not more than a third of the total volume of millable kauri will be removed. Silviculturists of the Forest Service say that the forest as a whole will benefit from these operations: there will be more room for the other maturing trees to grow, young kauri will be abb* to make good growth, and kauri seedlings will become established where the canopy is broken. Care is to be exercised to ensure that the canopy is not opened so much that kauri grass and other weeds will grow. In all, the proposal amounts to a carefully thought-out plan to manage the forest so that it may continue to produce kauri for all time.

Some erroneous statements about Warawara and the intended operations have been made.

It has been stated, for instance, that Warawara is the last major kauri forest. This is by no means so; the 22,500 acres of the Waipoua Sanctuary contain many thousands of acres of kauri. Of smaller extent are the Trounson Kauri Park and the Omahuta Kauri Grove, and there are a great number of kauris in the Waitakeres and in the forests of the Coromandel Peninsula.

It has also been stated that felling the Warawara kauris will cause flooding in the lowlands. But this is a needless misapprehension as there are no lowlands to flood, the streams from the kauri areas flowing directly into the Tasman Sea. There is also no truth in the statement that the cutting of the kauri will bring about drought conditions or in the one that it will cause sand dunes. Only selected trees are to be felled, not the whole forest or even patches of forest, and they will be taken from a swampy plateau 1,500 ft. above sea level, in a district which receives between 60 and 80 inches of rain a year. The slopes around the plateau (in some eastern parts very steep) will remain covered in bush. The nearest sand dunes are several miles to the south, at Hokianga Heads, and have no connection with Warawara.