Pines battle threatened

Waimarino Bulletin, Volume 5, Issue 26, 24 November 1987, Page 1

Pines battle threatened

Eighteen years o f voluntary weekend labour, hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of contract work and hundreds of hours of helicopter flying in the battle against the weed pinus contorta m a y have been wasted if the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries' recommendations on noxi o u s plants administration are carried out. In a discussion paper on noxious plants administration MAF suggests dividing weeds into two categories: a priority order list of latent noxious plants and a list of class B noxious plants. MAF suggests concentrating efforts on controlling the latent noxious plants and leaving it up to individual landowners to control class B weeds. Contorta has been placed on the class B list. It is this suggestion that puts the pinus contorta eradication programme at risk. Department of Conservation staff are worried

that without a legal obligation to remove contorta, Forest Corp will ignore trees that are not affecting radiata production. Conservation Officer Robert McCallum said what is really frustrating is that this is the first year the end of the project has been in sight. Forest Corp are felling the 1200 hectares of trees that are the seed source for seedlings sprouting up to 12 kilometres away in the Tongariro National Park, and 1993 is the year that these trees would be completely removed. Pinus contorta, or lodgepole pine, was introduced by the Forest Service in 1927 with plantings in Karioi Forest on the lower southern slopes of Mt Ruapehu. The horrible little tree is self-seeding and prolific, grows twice as fast as native moiintain beech, survives at high altitudes and small trees start seeding at five years old. The timber of which is of little commercial value. Conservation Officer

■Mnm Robert McCallum says it is possible to prevent the tree from completely overrunning the park by continuing the programme presently in place, and by removing the seed source from Karioi Forest. "After 20-odd years of back-breaking, soul destroying work the park itself is now free of seeding trees and can be maintained with a few hours of helicopter flying each year," said Mr McCallum. "If there is no contorta eradication outside the park boundaries, 20 years of effort will be down the tubes," he said. "Unless the seed trees go too, the situation will be back to how it was within five years" he said. Tramping club volunteers are now working their way back from the Park boundary through a buffer zone of Maori land to the Karioi Forest. The plan is to reach the forest boundary by 1993 when the seed trees would be gone. The Army and the Rangitikei Wanganui Catchment

Board have spent thousands of dollars on slash and bum on the Waiouru desert to control contorta, after the Army discovered they grow so thickly it is

impossible to w a 1 k through, or even drive a tank through. In North America the pine grows to an altitude of 3000 metres, so with Ru-

apehu standing at 2,700 metres it is conceivable the mountain would be completely covered in contorta if the trees were left completely alone.