OUR KAURI HERIT AGE

Forest and Bird, Volume 19, Issue 2, 1 May 1988, Page 4

OUR KAURI HERIT

AGE

4 NATIONAL PARK FOR THE NORTH

A new national park to protect the Crown kauri forests has been proposed by the Northland National Parks and Reserves Board. A preliminary investigation by officials of the Department of Conservation is underway, involving local communities, and a report on possibilities is due in October this year. Gordon Ell, Deputy National President of Forest and Bird and a member of the Northland National Parks and Reserves Board, outlines the proposal.

hatever the outcome, this survey of remaining kauri forests will probably determine their future for all time. Estimates vary about the amount of kauri forest surviving but it is generally agreed to be only 2 percent to 4 percent of the forests which once clothed vast areas from the vicinity of Auckland northward. Yet these remnants are often substantial forests — three separate areas in themselves exceed the recommended minimum of 10,000 hectares required for a national park. In all, the kauri national park proposal includes more than 92,000 hectares of Crown forests in Northland. Until recently only a tiny fraction was formally reserved. The turnaround in kauri forest protection has been the recent Conservation Act which encompasses the old State forests and forest parks of the New Zealand Forest Service into the Department of Conservation. The bringing together of the national kauri estate, under one ‘‘ownership’’, has made the kauri park proposal possible at last. Only six years ago the National Parks and Reserves Authority rejected a proposal to create a National Reserve out of Trounson Scenic Reserve. This magnificent relict north of Dargaville was at that time the only major kauri forest protected by the Reserves Act. Yet, at a mere 566 hectares, Trounson is now dwarfed by the adjacent Waipoua Forest Sanctuary of 12,884 hectares. While Waipoua was controlled (and protected) by the New Zealand Forest Service it remained "out of bounds" for the Park Board's efforts to protect the symbolic tree of the north by giving it ‘‘national status".

Serious Omission

Despite two magnificent offshore maritime parks — Hauraki and Bay of Islands — the

Auckland region lacks a mainland park regarded as ‘‘of national importance’"’. This is not a matter of parochial disappointment; it is a serious omission in our system of protecting different natural areas. It means that while the beech and podocarp forests of the south are largely representative of the ‘‘subantarctic’’ zone, New Zealand's ‘‘subtropical" plants and trees lack the formal protection of national park. It is as if the plants of the north are somehow less worthy of protection, yet its forest types are arguably just as exciting and impressive. North of a rather eccentric line which crosses the island about Auckland there lives a range of plants and trees unknown, in nature, further south. The kauri may be the most upstanding but the red-blossom-ing pohutukawa clinging to the coasts and the mudbound mangrove growing below high tide are among the more spectacular of plants which distinguish our subtropics. While there are scenic reserves, and now conservation lands taken from the Forest Service, there is no formal national park system to protect this heritage. The kauri national park proposal looks at the remaining forests between Auckland and Kaitaia and advocates a broad-based park, aggregating most of the Crown forests there. It extends beyond the immediate vicinity of Waipoua (some 22,511 hectares including Waima and Mataraua forests) to take in a further 10,000 hectares along the western coast of Northland — protected remnants like Trounson and Katui (295 hectares), deep enclaves in the once vast kauri lands of the northern Wairoa. Also in the brief of the park investigation are such spectacles as giant Maunganui Bluff (rising 460 metres sheer from the sea) and landmarks like the Kai Iwi lakes and

Kahakaharoa, the big dune at the northern entrance of the Hokianga Harbour. The investigation includes these places because they are such significant sights in a journey about Northland. Divorcing them from nearby forests is like closing your eyes to the Sutherland Falls or the glaciers on a southern journey. The diversity of reserves is like the concept of the Otago Goldfields Park, or the contrasting islands of the Hauraki Gulf Park. United by the kauri symbol, they preserve the essence of the wild north. The park proposal also looks further north, to the shores of the Hokianga Harbour, where there is a further focus of Crown forests. On the northern shore is nearly 7000 hectares of Warawara Forest where kauri was milled into the early 1970s. Stretching inland is another 10,524 hectares of contiguous forest, with frequent kauri, in Raetea Forest, Maungataniwha Forest and Mangamuka Scenic Reserve. Eastwards towards the Bay of Islands another 13,760 hectares of forest includes the kauri of Omahuta, Puketi (northern home of the kokako) and Manginangina. There are also the broad hills of eastern Northland, backing the remote coves of the outer Bay of Islands. Ngaiotonga Scenic Reserve rises from a broad river of mangroves through a succession of northern forest types to kauri on its ridge. Along with Russell Forest it contributes a further 7000 hectares to the proposal. Among other large blocks to be considered are Tangihua Forest (3240 hectares), Herekino (4745 hectares) and the bleak tableland of the Ahipara Gumfields (2925 hectares). Kauri Theme Approach The forests are not solid kauri — the tree does not grow like that — but like the big podocarps of the south it forms associations with other trees, often dominating the warm ridges with its broad-spreading head. The kauri exists in different stages of growth too, all worthy of representation in a ‘‘kauri theme’’ approach. Waipoua has the densest concentration of mature trees, some over 1000 years old. By contrast the southernmost reserve, Pukekaroro, is a conical hill of young trees emerging in fresh, green rickers above the sombre kanuka which nursed it. Pukekaroro would serve as the park's sentinel for travellers about to confront the Brynderwyn Hills where Northland proper begins. The gumfields are part of the proposal because of their significance in the story of kauri. Ahipara is a high tableland where poor white kauri soils bear little but stunted manuka and, seasonally, orchids. The roots of burned and vanished forests poke out of the claypans where gum diggers washed their hard-won nuggets earlier this century. At Lake Ohia, on the eastern side of Kaitaia, holes where gum diggers probed and excavated gum abut a wilderness reserve preserving the typical gumland plants — a kind of stunted shrubland — and the giant stumps of kauri trees flattened by some cataclysm more than 30,000 years ago. Elsewhere there are sometimes signs of pioneer milling — just as there are in parks like Urewera and Paparoa and Abel Tasman. That damage does not diminish the case for preserving what remains here either.

The fact is that much of the north was built on kauri. From the 1790s merchants were about the coasts of Coromandel and in the north seeking spars said to be on Nelson's ships at Trafalgar. Coastal ports flourished, as exporters to Australia and the Pacific, besides supplying the timber to

build our own settlements. Ship building yards began before New Zealand was officially declared a colony and many famous sailing vessels were built of kauri beside the northern rivers. While some "‘kauri" towns survive as service centres and holiday resorts, the map of the north includes the ghosts of long-gone towns and ports, vanished with their supporting forests. In an Official’s paper (to a joint meeting of the Northland Parks Board and the NPRA at Paihia last August) District Conservator John Beachman put forward five possible models for a kauri national park. They ran

the gamut from preserving Waipoua and its neighbours, through a Hokianga model to a broader Northland one, and a ‘‘kauri matrix model"’ which took in harbours, coastlines, historic houses of kauri and a range of covenanted land, including museums and Maori protected lands. The Northland board chose a Northland model, expressly excluding private property and Maori lands. There will still be scope for private groups to work in with a park proposal by offering covenanted lands — one group already has — but the investigation and the park idea is firmly based on better protection and management of existing public land. Maori Land Claims As it is, much of the Crown land in Northland is subject to land claims by Maori people under the Waitangi Tribunal Act. These cases may take a while to resolve but in the meantime the park investigation proceeds. The process will include consultation with Maori people of the region. The Park Board is charged by its Act to identify areas for protection and can make a recommendation without prejudicing any Maori claim. In the Far North, for example, the Park Board has already gained official endorsement for its Te Paki National Reserve, protecting much of the northern tip of New Zealand. That region too is subject to a Maori land claim. The Board's case is approved but no further action towards declaring a National Reserve will be made until the land claim is settled. Maori feeling for the forests may be deep and traditions of places and trees are still a part of life. At Waipoua an archaeological project, advised by Maori people, has revealed settlement in the forest going back perhaps 900 years. Everywhere in the north dramatic Maori fortress pa are a tangible symbol of the cultural heritage which per-

vades the lands and forests of Tai Tokerau. Nevertheless economic pressures are as strong on Maori tribal lands as they are on pakeha forests. Now the Crown forests are no longer available for milling, kauri timber prices have risen to levels unforeseen in the days when forests were poorly harvested and even burned. With bleak financial prospects both Maori and Pakeha farmers are being pressured to let the rights to cut kauri from their lands. The increase in private milling rights makes the preservation of what remains in state hands perhaps the only chance for the kauri. Local government and business too will be interested closely in a park proposal, with its tourist potential and its impact on employment and services. Conservation groups and other community interests will be canvassed. Already the national bodies of Federated Mountain Clubs, Native Forests Action Council and Forest and Bird have given support for a national park. Their areas to date, however, are not.as far ranging as the board’s Northland-wide proposal. The Department of Conservation in Kaikohe will be drawing these interests together in compiling their report on the possibilities. At the same time the head office of the department, along with the National Parks Authority, has been asked to support the investigation, speeding up the process towards a Section 8 investigation — and this is the stage when the National Park Authority instructs the Department of Conservation to complete a further official investigation so it can recommend a park to the Government.

Slow Process Making national parks can be a slow process: 14 years for the Whanganui; 12 years for the Paparoa. There is plenty of time for people to oppose it. Sometimes a park can be nibbled away while its supporters wait. Paparoa, created in 1987, protects only the fringe of the original Paparoa park proposal, while the Red Hills dropped off the edge of Mt Aspiring National Park and

proved difficult to add in later. That is why the kauri national park proposal has begun with the broadest possible base. It is easy to erode an area of land; practically impossible to extend it once the investigation gets underway. It is possible to see this ‘‘preliminary investigation’ as a technique to spread out the process and negotiations. More positively, however, it represents a new approach in establishing parks and reserves — early consultation to speed the later stages of investigation. Desirably it will identify misgivings, and gather support, while clarifying the proposal. Such a "‘theme"’ park, covering several forests, involves a degree of lateral thinking in national park terms. Yet to argue that a national park must be wholly contiguous is to condemn the kauri for surviving only in ‘islands’, albeit often of national park dimensions. Interpreted and managed as one, the forests of the region should give a higher profile to wild places of the north. The park should become a place of some local pride and a further attraction to tourists exploring the north. By managing the forests as one, park authorities could give absolute protection to the most sensitive corners while encouraging people to enjoy the kauri experience in all suitable places. Some people have argued that the remnant kauri forests have been so far whittled away that they no longer have the integrity befitting the title ‘‘National Park’. Visit these forests, however, and you may agree that such ‘‘last remnants" deserve the maximum status and protection.