MAORIS ASK FOR RUATOKI FOREST TO BE DEVELOPED

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 14, Issue 27, 19 August 1949, Page 5

MAORIS ASK FOR RUATOKI FOREST TO BE DEVELOPED

(Special to Beacon) Wellington, Thursday. The Bill conferred on the Director of Forestry very extensive powers. He had felt for a long time, said Mr W. Sullivan (National, Bay of Plenty) that there had been a tendency inside the State Forest Service to retain the State owned forest management service for State forests, largely to the exclusion of the private sawmiller. If that policy was going to be applied in the future to the exotic forests, then sooner or later the private sawmillers and others operating outside the State, forest areas would be written off. Mr Sullivan was speaking in the second debate of the Forest Bill in the House of Representatives. The State Forest service owned 9,200,000 acres; the Crown, a further 3,800,000 acres; and private owners about 4,000,000 acres, Mr Sullivan added: It was estimated that there were today about 17,000,000 acres in exotic and indigenous forests. It was calculated that the indigenous forests remaining were equivalent to something like 40,000,000,000 board feet of timber. We required about 500,000,000 board feet per annum, so that we had left about 60 to 80 years’ supply of indigenous timber.

Make Some Available He suggested that where there were mills pperating mostly in indigenous forests and where there were exotic plantations attached or nearby, it should be the policy of the State Forest Service to make available a percentage of exotic 'trees, say 25 per cent of the mill’s annual cut either through the sale of logs to the miller at a dump or by the sale of a certain acreage of exotic forest, to be logged under control of the State Forest Service.

Under such a procedure, indigenous timber would be used less extensively. Mr Sullivan said he hoped that more of the Maori, bush would be brought into the market, and thus make it more readily available to the millers than it was at the present time.

Not long ago he had received a deputation from some of the Madris at Ruatoki, in his territory. They were anxious that the saddle track that leads from Ruatoki to Maungapohutu right into the back country should be opened up, and they pointed out that there were millions of feet of good quality milling timber in that area.

He believed that if that country was explored it. would be found that there was an enormous amount of timber that could feed not only the Bay of Plenty area but the whole of the Auckland provincial district for many years. Over the last hundred years New Zealanders had destroyed many millions of feet of secondary timber of a type that we were today striving to make suitable for general use. Certain organisations in South Auckland and millers in the Mamaku, Tauranga and Bay of Plenty areas were forming themselves into groups to establish treating plants to immunise secondary timbers against borer and to treat them to some extent against decay. Much useful timber, notably tawa timber, had been bypassed in the past, and if it could be successfully treated against borer a good local and export market could be developed. There were enormous quantities of tawa in the Bay of Plenty and Tauranga districts.

No Real Objection “So far as this Bill is concerned, I have no 'real objection to it,” concluded Mr Sullivan. “The only fear I have is that extensive powers are given to the Minister and to the Director of Forestry. I hope that these powers will not be used for the purpose of further developing State enterprises at the expense of private enterprise. I firmly believe that we can carry out milling on • a more economic basis, and on a basis of a better supply to the public, giving to the people cheaper commodities than are possible through State enterprise.”