Still clearfelling on '93...

Forest and Bird, Issue 267, 1 February 1993, Page 2

Still clearfelling on '93...

Kevin Smith

AT YOKOHAMA, Japan, last November, New Zealand was welcomed as the 50th member of the International Tropical Timber Organisation. New Zealand’s inaugural address to the ITTO made the proud claim that "We have found our own solution to the problem of deforestation. The seven million hectares of remaining natural forest are now almost completely protected." Sadly, with this statement New Zealand has joined the ranks of international hypocrites in pulling a green curtain over the clearfelling and deforestation of our ancient rainforests.

Since coming to office with ~a manifesto that said "the clearfelling (of native forests) will end", the National government has let loose the chainsaws in the beech forests of Southland where export woodchipping has resumed, in the kanuka forests and shrublands of the East Coast by making government subsidies

available for clearance, and in the rain-drenched rimu forests of South Westland. Under the West Coast Accord the clearfelling of rimu in South Westland was to have ended last December. However, the government has extended the clearfelling undertaken by the state-owned West Coast Timberlands for

two more years which will see the logging of up to 50,000 rimu trees, each several centuries old. Pleas to the government by Forest and Bird and local residents to end the felling have been ignored. As the Malaysians, the Brazilians and North Americans know, clearfelling rainforests with no

thought for the future is an easy way to make a quick buck. In the 1990s New Zealand has gone from being one of the leading countries in the world on forest conservation to one of those that has to resort to international deception to conceal the awful reality of the destruction of its rainforests.