CRUNCH TIME FOR WEST COAST RAINFORESTS

Forest and Bird, Volume 17, Issue 4, 1 November 1986, Page 2

CRUNCH TIME FOR WEST COAST RAINFORESTS

The Government has declared that it wants to resolve the thorny issue of West Coast forests "once and for all’ by the end of this year. The Joint Campaign on Native Forests, of which the Society is a member, is also keen that decisions on "nature’s last great stronghold in New Zealand" are made as soon as possible — providing of course they are favourable for conservation. Here Society West Coast conservation officer, Kevin Smith, presents the case for why a network of reserves and wildlife corridors is vital for nature on the Coast.

|b the beech forests of Tawhai State Forest on the West Coast, the pre-dawn darkness rings with the quavering whistle of the kaka. At daybreak, these large forest parrots often flock together above the forest canopy in small cacophanous family groups. Their musical whistling gives way to harsh, grating calls before they settle down and commence food-gathering for the day, tearing open the decaying limbs of ageing forest trees in search of beetle larvae rich in nutritious fats. Lying in the heart of North Westland’s beech forests, Tawhai is one of the best places in New Zealand to see this impressive bird. For kaka, despite their robust appearance, have very specialised habitat requirements. Few birds are seen outside the handful of large continuous tracts of unmodified lowland forest remaining in this country. Kaka are totally dependent on the large diameter podocarp and beech trees of the forest for food and nesting holes. These trees however, are also keenly sought by sawmillers. Nowadays kaka are in high concentrations in only a limited part of North Westland, namely the low to mid altitude forests of the Reefton and Inangahua hill country. Sadly, the region’s present reserve system cannot ensure the survival of kaka in one of its national strongholds. The bulk of the existing Big River Ecological Area in Tawhai forest lies above 600 metres, the normal upper altitudinal range of kaka. Lower down, the podocarp/beech forests of its preferred habitat are zoned for logging. They are currently sought for reservation by

Wildlife scientists and conservationists. Because kaka range widely and only occur in relatively low numbers, large reserves of optimal habitat are essential to secure their survival. The future of kaka, other declining forest wildlife and irreplaceable forest ecosystems in North Westland and Buller will be determined shortly.

Legendary names

Government is about to take important decisions on the future of West Coast forests. Conservationists have been fighting to save these forests for a decade and more. Some of them have been household names for much of this time: Oparara, Paparoa and Maruia are legendary names that instantly evoke images of pristine landscapes, tall forests rich with bird song and unrivalled scenic splendour. Other forests have achieved national prominence only recently as logging roads bored into their hearts. These include Harata, Ahaura Gorge, Doctor Hill and the North Westland wildlife corridor forests. Thousands of people have been involved in the conservation campaigns for these forests. Innumerable letters and submissions have been written, hundreds of field trips and public meetings held, and scores of politicians introduced to their beauty and ecological wonders. Despite this outpouring of concern, few of the key areas have been legally protected. Some of the finest natural landscapes and ecologically valuable forests remain at risk. However, enormous shifts in public and official perceptions of these forests have

occurred. There is now a national awareness that West Coast forests, once only looked on as a timber resource, possess diverse ecological, educational, recreational and natural heritage values. West Coasters, too, increasingly value these forests both in their own right and for the role they play in the regional economy through tourism.

Cossetted industry

During the last decade constraints on reservation have not applied to the West Coast timber industry. Cossetted by long term contracts signed in the 1960s, the industry has remorselessly devastated vast tracts of fine forest. Even today the opportunity to select representative reserves from the remaining forests is severely restricted by timber contracts that in most cases run on till 1990. An enormous 450,000 cubic metres of mainly rimu timber must be felled to honour them. Fortunately, the timber resource is large enough to enable the creation of a network of reserves covering the key conservation areas. For the northern portion of the West Coast from Karamea through to the Hokitika region, proposed reserves have jointly been put forward to the Government by the Wildlife Service, the DSIR and Joint Campaign on Native Forests. In addition the National Parks and Reserves Authority has recommended a Paparoa National Park. Decisions on West Coast forests have been repeatedly postponed by successive governments. Few politicians have comprehended their crucial national and international importance. As a people, we have been slow to recognise that New Zealand's indigenous forests are unique in the world. They are of international scientific, conservation and tourist interest because of the distinctiveness of their life forms, whose evolutionary lineage extends back 100 million years to the Mesozoic forests of Gondwanaland, and because of their world class scenery.

Nature’s stronghold

In this context, the West Coast holds pride of place as nature’s last great stronghold in New Zealand. Here, tracts of magnificent natural landscapes still occur in very nearly primeval condition. These virgin lands offer our last opportunities to preserve a range of natural habitats and species that have long since been lost elsewhere. In Buller and North Westland these opportunities are rapidly diminishing as destructive logging progressively exhausts the once bountiful forest resource. It is the lowland forests, which are under the greatest pressure for timber production, that are vital for nature conservation. They possess the richest assemblages of plants, support the most abundant and diverse populations of native birds and offer habitats for many species of plants and animals that cannot survive in upland habitats.

Existing reserves in North Westland and Buller are grossly inadequate. They comprise a patchy scattering of mostly small scenic reserves and a series of State Forest ecological areas established in the mid 1970s. However, the political climate of that time was hostile to conservation. Only minimal reserve areas were put forward by the Forest Service and its scientific advisory committee. They largely ignored the recommendations of the DSIR and Wildlife Service, and the reserves were whittled away even further when an Officials committee selectively removed podocarp dominant communities. The inadequacies of the existing reserve network were highlighted by a recent report on future options for West Coast forests by the Secretary for the Environment. This report notes that the existing reserves have a strong bias towards upland and steepland areas. Lowland forest set aside are in the main non-merchantable or previously logged forest types (7 of the 12 North Westland reserves have had the bulk of the merchantable timber logged out of them). High volume podocarp forests and alluvial forests are poorly represented. From a wildlife viewpoint, the reserves are too small and dominated by high altitude and poor quality habitat. Major new representative reserves have been promoted to rectify this imbalance. If approved, they will significantly increase the reserve representation of lowland forest communities. This, in turn, will enhance the ability of the reserve network to support viable wildlife populations, particularly of sensitive species such as kaka, parakeet and robin. They also have important amenity values and these form a crucial part of their justification.

Buller reserves

In the Buller, eight representative reserves have been proposed along with the Paparoa National Park and the Atbara-Nile park addition. The Buller forests have several nationally unique and distinctive features, the most outstanding being the forests of

the limestone syncline in the western Paparoas which form the largest intact tract of warm, lowland forest left in New Zealand. Exceptionally diverse vegetation is a feature of the region, reflecting the complex geology, varied landforms and different climatic regimes. The mild humid coastal climate allows warmth adapted North Island species to thrive eg, nikau, northern rata and rangiora. Over 40 species have their southern limits in the region including two major tree species, titoki and puketea. A remarkable number of endemic (ie, found nowhere else) species occur in the Buller, together with a number of other species whose distribution is centred on the region. The presence and location of such species indicates the sites of vegetation refuges during past glacial episodes. The Buller region appears to have played an important role in sustaining the New Zealand vegetation during the ice age, and in contributing to its botanical diversity. The limestone syncline forests of the Paparoas are the most outstanding forest bird refuge in the South Island. Densities of forest birds are amongst the highest ever recorded in New Zealand. These include healthy breeding populations of endemic species with restricted distributions eg, western weka, great spotted kiwi, kaka, robin and parakeets. The remaining lowland forests of North Buller are also vitally important habitats for these bird species and as wintering over habitat for birds from the extensive adjacent uplands. Unique populations of large carnivorous land snails occur in some forests.

North Westland Reserves

Long the centre of environmental controversy, the lowland beech forests of North Westland are very poorly served by the existing reserves. Yet this is a region of extraordinary ecological interest and tremendous scenic appeal. Beech forests are better developed here than elsewhere in the country. All four beech species — red, silver, mountain and hard — are well represented across a wide spectrum of

landform and altitudes in both pure stands and in mixed beech-podocarp forests. They include the nation’s finest examples of red beech forest (Maruia) and hard beech forest (Tawhai). The impact of glaciation on the landforms and biota can be traced back over tens of thousands of years. By contrast, in South Westland evidence of earlier glaciations has been eliminated by recent heavy

glaciation. This makes North Westland a crucial area for understanding the development of soils and vegetation over long periods of time. Moreover, in North Westland, the two major forest classes, beech and podocarp, meet in one of the foremost anomalies in the distribution of New Zealand forest vegetation. The beeches, with their poorly dispersed seeds, seem to be slowly expanding their range southward into the podocarp forest of central Westland from old ice free refuges to the north. North Westland forests have exceptional wildlife values. They are an important national stronghold for three declining species with limited distribution, namely Kaka, parakeet and robin, and contain small populations of the rare yellowhead. For these and many other wildlife species the importance of such a large, diverse and relatively unmodified area of forest cannot be overestimated. Ten major reserves are sought in North Westland, the largest being the Maruia West Bank, Deepdale and Tawhai (Big River Ecological Area extension) proposals. The reserves, like those of the Buller and Central Westland, have been chosen to protect viable representative examples of the vegetation, wildlife, landforms, geology and soils of the region's ecological districts. Each ecological district (there are five in the North Westland beech area) is a separate biogeographic division and provides a basis for assessing the natural diversity of plant and animal communities.

Central Westland Podocarp Forests

Centred on Hokitika, this region has borne the brunt of 120 years of exploitation on the West Coast. The former dense podocarp forests of the river plains and lower terrace flights have been almost entirely cleared. Only a limited number of the originally wide range of forest types are well represented in the sizeable Lake Kaniere Scenic Reserve. Most of the podocarp hard wood forest on the hills and higher terraces has been extensively logged. Wildlife populations are impoverished compared to the other regions with robin, kaka and parakeet all scarce. The State Forest reserve system is almost non-existent. The 42,300 ha of State Forest in the Hokitika Ecological District, more than half of which is in production forestry, contains no ecological areas. Four representative reserves have been proposed for the best remnant forest stands in the area and to ensure the wildlife populations are not further depleted.

North Westland Wildlife Corridor

To ensure the survival of healthy wildlife populations in North Westland, the Wildlife Service has recommended linking the key reserve areas with continuous protected forest corridors. The corridor extends from the upland forests of the eastern Paparoas across the Reefton Saddle hill country through to Tawhai Forest and upland forests along the Southern Alps. This is the only remaining forested link between the Paparoa Range and Southern Alps. From Tawhai Forest, the corridor extends southwards linking key lowland wildlife habitats of Harata, Flagstaff, Anaura Gorge and Hochstetter. The corridor proposal recognises the reality of forest management in North Westland. Strong competing proposals from the timber industry exist for the use of the region's lowland forests for sawlogs and chipwood. This means that the reserves and their linking corridors must be able to sustain viable wildlife populations of the more sensitive species largely on their own.

Research has shown that native bird densities are sharply reduced in managed beech forests with their patchwork of slowly regenerating clearfelled areas. Kaka, parakeet and robin populations reduce to zero after logging; only introduced birds increase in abundance. In sum, the wildlife corridor is needed for several key reasons: to maintain species diversity by allowing wildlife populations to mix between reserved areas; to permit seasonal movements of birds and other fauna to lower altitudes; and to provide additional habitat for species like kaka and parakeet that need large areas of relatively unmodified habitat. The corridor also provides a reservoir of species to recolonise any adjoining modified forest areas. The Wildlife Service believes that, in the absence of wildlife corridors, a series of forest reserves separated by modified poor quality habitat will not guarantee the survival of all North Westland’s indigenous forest fauna.

Reinstatement of Original Reserves

Conservationists are also seeking the reinstatement of original reserve areas deleted by the 1979 Officials Committee. The largest area is an 1800 ha tract of regenerating rimu forest excised from the Greenstone Ecological Area on the Greenstone Plain west of Lake Brunner. Also included is the last unlogged silver pine stand in North Westland which should be added to the Flagstaff Ecological Area. Forest Service amenity reserves, which seek to preserve North Westland’s scenic backdrop, should also be given legal protection. Important choices face the Government on the future of West Coast forests. Their decision will be a test of our maturity as a people as it will irrevocably determine the fate of a large portion of this country’s forest heritage. Opportunities exist to establish an unrivalled network of forest reserves that will be treasured for generations to come. Instead of symbolising deSpair and a lost past, the kaka can become a symbol of hope and confidence in the future.