Comment from the Capital Mixed reception for Coast reserves plan

Press, 23 April 1979, Page 16

Comment from the Capital Mixed reception for Coast reserves plan

By

OLIVER RIDDELL

West Coast forests are being discussed again. Residents of that region who complain about neglect by the rest of the country may soon be wondering if a degree of neglect might not be preferable to the intensifying controversy about reserving or milling tracts of native forest there.

The announcement of the Minister of Lands (Mr V. S. Young), who is also Minister of Forests and Minister for the Environment, that 130,000 ha of State forest land on the West Coast would be reserved has brought protests from conservationist groups, and considerable anger within the public service.

This strength of feeling, that far too much native forest is available for milling instead of being reserved, is matched by a feeling on the West Coast, which is shared by another section of the public service, that 130,000 ha is too much land to lock away. The announcement has not ended the matter.

Looking beyond the fairly predictable reactions immediately after the announcement, the Government might reasonably hope that once all these reserves have been gazetted the heat will begin to die down. These decisions were not made in a vacuum. The controversy has been argued for years and has received much serious study from all parties.

A continuing controversy will not, however, be confined to extremist groups on either side of the fence. The dilemma facing the Government is too central to the future of the West Coast for that.

. The Government has an obligation to preserve a

society with a sound commercial base on the West Coast; and forestry is one way of achieving this. Unfortunately, a big gap exists in the time between phasing out milling of native timber and phasing in milling of exotic timber. The Government has to maintain enough supplies to fill this gap without forcing the closure of the milling industry. On the other hand, there is the desire of many people in New Zealand to retain as much native forest on the West Coast as possible — particularly of the lowland forest — for its own sake and for the sake of the wildlife within it.

These two aims are incompatible. The Government has played its hand very cleverly,. The two organisations which might have been expected to clamour for bigger reserves — the Wildlife Service and the Commission for the Environment — have both had their teeth drawn by being made reluctant parties to the decision. The Wildlife Service is a member of the Government’s Scientific Co-ordinating Committee and made reserve recommendations to this committee. This committee, in turn, made reserve recommendations to an officials committee, recommendations which fell well short of what the Wildlife Service wanted, but to which it had to agree as a member of the Scientific Co-ordinating Committee.

The officials committee, in its turn, made recommendations to the Minister which he has now largely accepted. The Commission for the Environment was a member of this officials committee, and so was seen to give its sanction to recommendations which were less than those recommended by the Scientific Co-ordinating Committee

and even further removed from those of the Wildlife Service. Yet the Forest Service, the sector of the Government which most strongly represents milling interests, was far from happy with what it saw as the too generous recommendations of the Scientific Co-ordinating Committee. Privately, some staff consider even the officials committee had gone too far in its recommendations also. Because of the mechanics through which the decision was made there should be little overt criticism of it from within the Public Service. The impetus for more or less reserve will have to come from the community. There is still a degree of uncertainty over exactly what the proposed reserves are. But it is clear that the northern West Coast region — Paparoas, Maruia and Upper Grey Valley— is the most controversial. The decision to mill the southern Okarito Forest will not upset too many people. The white herons are being protected. The Waikukupa State Forest is becoming part of the Westland National Park and the forest left, some of which has been partly milled,* is not rich in birdlife.

However, because there have already been calls for national parks in the Papa-roa-Punakaiki area, and in the Maruia-Upper Grey area, even the reserves to be established there will not placate the conservationists. The reserves are most unlikely to provide the continuous, safe, habitat that ecologists have agreed is needed to protect wildilfe.

The Government has made its decision on the status of the native forests of the West Coast. It now remains to be seen whether enough pressure can be applied to it, from whatever quarter, to oblige it to change its mind.