Whirinaki revisited

Forest and Bird, Issue 280, 1 May 1996, Unnumbered Page

Whirinaki

revisited

John Morton.

Dinosaur forest, David Bellamy called it. One of the most faithful representations of a Mesozoic plant community remaining on

earth, said

But it wasn’t until

1984 that the stupendous podocarp trees of Whirinaki Forest east of Lake Taupo were finally granted full protection after a major campaign by conservationists. IAN CLOSE looks at Whirinaki today, 12 years after the logging stopped.

Y APPROACH TO Whirinaki Forest is not inspiring. For over 30 kilometres the Rotorua-Wairoa road runs through pine forests — large sprawling human artefacts such as Kaingaroa, the largest planted forest in the southern hemisphere. Whirinaki today is the 60,000 hectares. that were left of a much greater forest when the chainsaws finally ceased in 1984. The last five percent of the dense tall-stemmed podocarp forest left on earth. Rimu, totara, matai, miro and kahikatea — the ancient giants of New Zealand’s podocarp species — achieve some of their greatest glory in the

western valleys of Whirinaki, on the deep ash and pumice beds thrown out by the Taupo eruption 1,800 years ago. Remote, bush-sick and with a harsh winter making the land unwanted for the farm clearance that claimed most of New Zealand’s other lowland forest, Whirinaki remained undisturbed by European settlers until about 1930 when the timber value of the large podocarps saw the beginning of forest clearance. A number of outrageous incidents, embarrassing even to the Forest Service, occurred in the sorry saga of the depletion of this forest. One of these was the clearfelling of the magnificent, almost pure totara, forests of the Mangawiri basin on the specious grounds that the trees were dying. Subsequent experience

suggested that the poor health of the trees was most likely caused by high levels of possum browsing. Remnants that escaped the logging are now in good condition. By the late 1970s, with growing environmental concern over the loss of native vegetation, clearfelling gave way to the supposedly more "enlightened" era of selection logging. But voices, such as those of the Native Forests Action Council and Forest and Bird, continued to be raised in opposition to the continuing destruction of this great forest and to the felling of trees from old-growth podocarp stands. The growing protests were met with resistance not only from the government and Forest Service but also from residents of the small forestry community of Minginui, who controlled the main road access into the forest. A highly publicised blockade stopped conservationists entering the forest, and at one stage timber workers from Minginui took over Forest and Bird’s Rotorua branch. The National Parks and Reserves Authority considered a proposal to add southern Whirinaki to the Urewera National Park, but the government continued to log the forest, albeit at a scaled-down rate.

By 1984 the battle was over. The election of Labour in that year, committed to an end to the logging of the forest, finally ensured its long-term protection. Whirinaki is now a conservation park managed by DoC. HAT HAS HAPPENED in the 12 years since? The giant podocarps, of course, still tower over the forest as they have done for more than 1,000 years. Areas such as the Tauranga Stream Basin with its unique stands of matai and totara remain great showpieces of New Zealand’s rainforest. John Sutton, manager of DoC’s field centre at Murupara, says that while no formal monitoring of the forest’s condition has been done for a decade, Whirinaki faces pest problems similar to other podocarp and mixed podocarphardwood forests in the country. Rata is declining due to possum browsing and is likely to be largely gone within a few years; goats are colonising the southern end of the park; and Pinus contorta wilding spread from the adjacent pine forests is an increasing worry.

The promises of eco-tourism, suggested at the time as an answer to the loss of income from indigenous forestry, have borne little fruit. For many people in nearby Rotorua and Taupo, the name Whirinaki rings a faint bell, but they have no idea where it is. It is almost as if a forest saga that made national headlines over a period of five years, never happened. John Sutton says that visitor levels have stayed relatively low. Although one opera-

tor has a concession to run a guided trekking business in the park (see box on opposite page) and a couple of other small concessions are in the pipeline, Sutton estimates that only 5,000 people use the tracks in the park each year. Many conservationists, such as Craig Potton, photographer and member of the New Zealand Conservation Authority, are happy with it that way. "I love to know it is there but I certainly don’t feel it has to be full of visitors to justify its existence."

Potton feels that, in its interpretation through signs and brochures and in its management strategies, DoC doesn't acknowledge some of the politics behind the existence of a forest such as Whirinaki. "It’s important not to forget the past. Some of our forests resonate with a special human history — the battle to save them from the chainsaw. Whirinaki is as much a historical resource as an ecological one." As I walk in the soft rain past the huge rimu, kahikatea and matai trees in the Whirinaki Sanctuary, their great venerable columns of wood disappearing through the lower canopy of tawa, this primeval place fills me with awe and inspiration. It is a national icon as special as the renowned kauri forest of Waipoua, and, as John Morton wrote, "one of the grandest sights in the world". The work of those who ensured the protection of this

forest should be celebrated. @ TAN CLOSE is the editor of Forest and Bird.