ROTOITI – A sign of Assertion

Forest and Bird, Volume 19, Issue 3, 1 August 1988, Page 2

ROTOITI – A sign

of Assertion

Some conservation wrangles take years to resolve, some are settled in a weekend. It was a case of the latter for the Fletcher Challenge’s Rotoiti block near Rotorua, after a Forest and Bird protest stopped logging in kokako forest. In this article our Central North Island field officer Ann Graeme and Te Puke member Colin Adams outlines the significance of the successful protest. ‘o the general public, the Rotoiti saga may have been no more than yet another conservation story. Yet the significance of the event was that the forest was privately-owned, signalling a new assertion by conservationists that no logging of native forest, especially in the North Island, can be justified. Up until recently, most conservation battles have centred on publicly-owned forests, for the simple reason that they have been the easiest to win. By 1984 this policy of concentrating on state-sponsored destruction had paid off with the announcement by the new Labour Government that all logging of public forests in the North Island was finished. The only exception was for Maori cultural purposes.

The challenge now is to convince owners of private native forest that they should safeguard it for all time. Planet Earth is at a crucial crossroads and further destruction cannot be countenanced. Fletcher's Rotoiti forest, managed by its subsidiary Tasman Forestry Ltd, is a few kilometres north of picturesque Lake Rotoiti. Being lowland, it epitomises the forest most at risk in New Zealand. Rotoiti is dominated by tawa, kohekohe, mangaeo and rewarewa, with a diverse shrub understorey, making it prime wildlife habitat. It is a link in the fragmented forests which could maintain a forest corridor to the well known kokako reserve in Rotoehu forest. There are possibly 10 pair of kokako dependent on the 417 ha Rotoiti block. Esti-

mates of the number of North Island kokako are about 1600, but many of these are in small scattered remnants. Whatever the number the bird is clearly in trouble and fast declining in the face of continued forest destruction. Some Conservation Department staff have unfortunately taken the view that, where forests are about to be felled, the birds should be captured and released on secure islands. Forest & Bird, on the other hand, believes that it is preferable putting effort into saving the forest. So it was with Rotoiti. In response to our weekend protests that Tasman’s logging was ‘‘extinction in action’ the company held a four-hour meeting with Forest & Bird representatives, at which it was agreed that no further logging would take place and the forest would be reserved. A liaison committee has also been set up to discuss further Tasman native forest holdings, consisting of company representatives, plus conservation and catchment representatives.

Essence of New Zealand

The Rotoiti incident highlighted the danger facing much of our privately-owned forest.

According to the Conservation Department, possibly 2000ha of these forests are cleared a year, although this is a very rough estimate and it is not clear how much of it has a high conservation value. Fifty percent of North Island native forest is in private hands, and it includes lowland forest, roadside bush and scattered bush in paddocks. The essence of New Zealand survives in these unprotected remnants, but how can we influence their future? The Conservation Department believes that almost half the existing privatelyowned native forest has been or could be effectively exempted from felling through the application of the Soil Conservation and Rivers Control Act because it lies on steep or erosion-prone land. As many Forest &

Bird members will know, in the past this has not always stopped clearance on such land. However, there is opportunity to prod dilatory catchment authorities, and ask that the Acts be stringently applied. We must ensure that these controls are strengthened in the current overhaul of resource statutes. We should also support the Conservation Department's view that removal of forest on private land be always a ‘conditional use’. While this Town and Country Planning Act condition does not actually protect the forest, it ensures that a potential logging scheme is advertised in the newspaper, allowing conservationist objectors to voice their opposition. It would make logging a privilege, not a right — a great philosophical advance in land use in this country.

Legal Process Slow

But achieving changes through the legal process is slow, and the forests continue to fall. The brief Rotoiti campaign showed us a number of things the conscience of large public companies, the power of the media, and the groundswell of anger when it is learned that clearfelling continues today,

despite the gains of conservation. Most New Zealanders will agree with Helen Clark's sentiment that ‘companies such as Fletcher Challenge’s Tasman Forestry have a moral responsibility to recognise the important community and ecological values of the unprotected tracts of relatively unmodified forest which remain." With commendable public spirit, Tasman has reserved much of the Rotoiti block and set up a liason committee. This unique opportunity gives us a chance to put forward our point of view and influence the company to protect a greater amount of native forest. It is important now that we establish similar contact with other forestry companies.

New Zealand Forest Products has already responded by placing a moratorium on the Tram Road block at Matahina. However, Forest Products are also guilty of wholesale clearance of their own so-called "‘reserves’’ and other forest adjoining the Kaimai-Ma-maku Forest Park. It is clear that, until these reserves have legal backing, they are reserves in name only. Public opinion has hardened against forest destruction to the extent that, in the words of the New Zealand Herald editorial following the Rotoiti protest: ‘‘Nobody today can clearfell native forest and get away with itive