Climbing trees in Pureora — yet again

Forest and Bird, Issue 292, 1 May 1999, Page 8

Climbing trees in Pureora — yet again

—Ann Graeme.

hen veteran conservation campaigner Stephen King returned to Pureora to mark 20 years since his landmark tree-sitting protest to save the forest, he climbed the trees again. This climb was another call for action to reunite the two surviving blocks of Puereora Forest by replanting native trees in a linking corridor. The largest rimu, matai and totara grow on the ash soils of the Volcanic Plateau. These, the most splendid podocarps in the North Island, have been heavily logged and most of their forests converted to farmland or pine forest. Only two forests remain, Whirinaki, south of Rotorua, and Pureora, west of Taupo. Both forests were rescued from clear felling after conservation battles, and both are ragged entities, bounded and pierced with exotic pine forests. Pureora is divided in two by pine forest and farmland. It has long been the aim of Stephen King, and other conservationists, to reunite the forest segments and provide an ecologically viable future for Pureora’s biodiversity.

This vision was supported by the former Prime Minister Jim Bolger, and would involve replanting and predator-fencing a 6000-hectare corridor between the northern and southern blocks. The project could be financed by the imminent harvest of the pine forest within the corridor. Stephen King argues the vision must be rekindled. Without it, the margins of Pureora’s remnant forests will wither, and their outstanding diversity of wildlife will shrink under the onslaught of weeds and animal pests. As Stephen says, ‘If the Government is serious about saving biodiversity, this is the place to start .... Such a project would cost a fraction of Te Papa’s bricks and mortar and would be of inestimable and enduring

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Ann Graeme writes about podocarp forests in her In the Field feature on page 38 of this issue.