Kauri national park?

Forest and Bird, Issue 281, 1 August 1996, Unnumbered Page

Kauri national park?

What happened to the

After nearly 100 years of advocacy, the remnant kauri forests of Northland have at last been officially recognised as a great national treasure. If Maori claims

across them could be settled, reports GORDON ELL, these areas would be in line to become New Zealand’s fourteenth national park.

URING THE 1980s Forest and Bird helped to develop a proposal to link Northland’s kauri forests in a new national park. The society mounted a campaign, forged alliances with local businesses and local government groups, and published a calendar, poster and a number of campaign brochures. Much of the campaigning since then has been of a more back-room variety. Because of Treaty of Waitangi claims over

the whole area, progress has been governed by the changing political climate. Now an interim report from the New Zealand Conservation Authority, the statutory body which has the job of investigating and recommending natural areas for protection, recognises several of the Northland forests as being of national park quality. The report, however, stops short of recommending that the government confer national park status immediately, suggesting instead that Treaty of Waitangi

claims over the affected Crown land need to be resolved before "any effective progress" can be made. Focus of the proposed kauri national park is very broadly the Hokianga region, but the concept stretches to include historic gumland reserves near Kaitaia in the north and the extensive Waipoua Forest and Trounson Reserve in the south. It also stretches inland across the Northland isthmus to include Puketi and Omahuta forests, nearer the Bay of Islands. The lands found to have national park qualities total 76,458 hectares and are all currently reserves managed by the Department of Conservation. National park status would give these areas a higher status in the hierarchy of protected areas in New Zealand, and would also provide a greater level of international recognition of their ecological values. The outline of the suggested park follows some eight years of investigation during which more than 96,000 hectares of Crown land in Northland, in some 33 reserves, were assessed for their national park "values". These are defined in law to include natural features so beautiful, or ecological systems so scientifically important or unique, that their preservation is in the national interest. The concept of a national park made up of fragmented areas is revolutionary. Whereas New Zealand’s thirteen other national parks are all extensive areas of wilderness, Northland’s forests are but islands in a settled landscape, albeit often large ones. Yet the very nature of these forests, usually standing proud on plateau and mountain range, makes them a vital

inter-connecting element in_ the Northland landscape. There is a further unity in that each represents a different aspect of the kauri forest, or the Northland forest type — from the younger kauri forests and various mixed stands, to the mature giants of Waipoua or the abandoned kauri gumlands of Ahipara. /HILE STILL impressive, the kauri forests of the north are only tiny remnants of forests which once stretched from the Far North, south to the Waikato, Coromandel . 4 and northern Bay of Plenty.While cleared in many places, they still covered more than a million hectares when the first European traders came looking for spars in the late 1790s.

Today less than one per cent remains unmodified, some 7,500 hectares, and these are protected in Crown hands. Another 60,000 hectares are regenerating secondary forest, mostly in Northland, and now the focus of the national park proposal. The giant kauri trees, living perhaps to 2,000 years or more, are part of a forest type influenced more by subtropical climes than by the subantarctic which has shaped our other national parks. A major part of the campaign to give these kauri forests national park status dwelt on the fact that none of the existing parks recognises the values of New Zealand’s subtropical trees and plants. Trees

such as the pohutukawa and the mangrove growing in the sea, are spectacular examples of native species which are not currently recognised in a supposedly representative system of national parks. In all, the rich northern forests contain more than 600 different tree and plant species. That diversity includes many other regionally restricted forest trees, such as the leathery-leaved taraire, the mulberry-like whau, tanekaha, puriri, wharangi, and a host of other smaller trees and shrubs. Some of these warmth-loving species may occur further south, just as southern rainforest trees often grow with the kauri. Yet, the northern forests also harbour 125 plant species not found naturally elsewhere. Some six percent of New Zealand’s native flora is peculiar to the north. Kauri itself usually grows with other trees in a mixed forest. Occasionally, perhaps along a sunny ridge, kauri dominates for an hectare or so, while elsewhere it grows in association with other rainforest trees in a more familiar Northland jungle. Forest descriptions such as podocarp/hardwood/kauri forest and kauri/hard beech forest link the dominant large trees with their associated species. Thus the kauri is seen as the common symbol uniting the various reserves in the proposed park. The kauri park boundaries would also

protect a range of animals, some peculiar to the region. New Zealand’s two rare bat species occur in the forests. During the process of investigating the park proposal, further populations of the endangered kokako were discovered. Remnant populations of kaka and red-crowned kakariki depend on the shelter of these forests as do brown kiwi, kereru and the threatened kauri snail. Significant populations of lizards and native fish are recorded. Besides forests, the park would include some scenic areas, notably the giant white sand dunes at the northern entrance to Hokianga Harbour. The Kahakaroa big dune, rising 200 metres from the ocean, has been cited as a scenic equivalent of the glaciers which infiltrate the forests of some southern parks. There is also an extensive area of historic gumlands included, above Ahipara, running south from Ninety Mile Beach. Proposals to include the magnificent cliffs of Maunganui Bluff, rising 400 metres above the ocean, and the wild and scenic Kawerua coast, west of Waipoua, were passed over because of findings by the Waitangi Tribunal in favour of the Te Roroa tribe. The major components of the park, however, are forests: running along the northern shores of the Hokianga harbour, and along the Maungataniwha Range from Herekino Forest to Puketi and Omahuta; and on the southern shores, the forest masses of Waima, Mataraua and Waipoua with outliers at Trounson Kauri Park, Kaitui and Kaihu, further south. The three major blocks are each big enough in themselves to meet the criterion of "sufficient scale" for conventional national park status. This focus on the western coast of Northland helped to give the concept a unity; indeed as an option in the investigation it was known as the "Hokianga model" — a generous sweep of mature forests loosely focussed about the Hokianga Harbour. There were some gems that did not make it including Pukekaroro, in lower Northland, where a landmark hill clad in younger kauri diverts Highway One in a broad curve; originally this hill, with its historic stone pa, was to be a gatepost for travellers entering the region to enjoy the park. Unfortunately, as the forests were

tested against the criteria for a national park, many of the linking kauri "islands" fell off the plan; places like Motatau and Hikurangi in the centre of the region, and Ruakaka and Waipu Gorge in lower Northland. Ultimately, Pukekaroro stood too far apart from the kauri heartland in the west. The proposed park boundaries now end on the northern slopes of Tutamoe, north of Dargaville. The more significant exclusions, however, are on the east coast. Both Lake Ohia, a 30,000-year-old fossil kauri forest at Karekare Peninsula, and the extensive Ranfurly Bay reserve about Whangaroa Harbour were seen as too different and distant from the horizons of Hokianga to help make up a whole. The Bay of Islands forests were similarly rejected but also suffered by comparison from the intrusion of pine forests, logging damage, poor public access and invasive weeds. RGUMENTS for protecting the Be go back nearly 140 years. In 1859, the geologist Ferdinand von Hochstetter complained the forests were being "ransacked and ravaged by fire and sword" and predicted the ultimate extinction of kauri. In 1907 the botanist Leonard Cockayne argued for a national park at Waipoua. In 1948, Professor W. R. McGregor led a Forest and Bird campaign which raised 50,000 signatures and led to the creation of the Waipoua Forest Sanctuary four years later. Yet kauri and the northern forests generally stayed outside the network of absolutely protected reserves until the reorganisation of conservation administration in 1987. Only then, with the abolition of the Forest Service which managed most of the kauri, was it practicable to apply the National Parks Act to protect them. Recognising this opportunity, local conservationists and park boards pressed for a special assessment of the wild lands of Northland and the creation from them of a Northland Kauri National Park. The fact that there were now only remnants of the former forests, simply served as further justification for preserving them with the maximum status. After nearly a decade of renewed advocacy, investigation and public consultation, the arguments for national park status have been found to have substance. A new kind of national park has been defined in the mosaic of forests, unified by the past and present of the kauri. As the authority’s report notes, the frame of kauri forests standing above settled farmland and reflected in the tidal

rivers defines the quintessential northern landscape today. The industries of kauri milling and kauri gumdigging created the North of today, just as the forests once helped condition the natural world of Maori. Now, for the first time, a New Zealand national park could take a large account of cultural history too, protecting plants, wildlife and scenery in a context of the local communities which have shaped and been shaped by the kauri. Presently, however, the concept languishes. Maori tribes in recent years have lodged claims with the Waitangi Tribunal over all the forests in the park proposal. Until these outstanding Maori grievances are resolved, the Conservation Authority will not recommend that the government declare a national park. At the present rate of progress this could take many years. As a Northland elder, supportive of the park proposal, said as Maori opposition

grew — "Unfortunately, the Northland kauri national park has walked into the path of history". The findings of the Conservation Authority have, meanwhile, put a protective value on the remnants of the kauri forests and suggested how, given time and justice, they might one day be preserved. ®

GORDON ELL was involved in formulating the concept of a kauri national park while a member of the 3 former Northland National Parks and Reserves Board. He is a former president of Forest and Bird and currently the society’s nominee on the New Zealand Conservation Authority.