The Ruination of orikaka

Forest and Bird, Issue 296, 1 May 2000, Page 21

The Ruination of orikaka

Despite the Government's cancellation of beechlogging, a Government-owned company is still heavily logging native forests on the West Coast, particularly in Buller. PETE LUSK reports on the unsustainable logging of Orikaka Forest.

T he big helicopter hovers over Orikaka Forest like a ship in the sky. Slowly it descends to the tree tops, lowering a clamp on the end of a long steel rope. The pilot secures a big rimu log, applies the power, and another five-tonne load is on its way to the road end. Three minutes later, he’s back for another, and another, and another. The logs build up, and soon 500 rimu and kahikatea are stacked up waiting transport to the mill. For local conservationists the thump, thump, thump of the big chopper leaving Westport airport each morning is a sickening sound. It represents the stripping of forests at a rate far faster than they can replace themselves. State-owned enterprise Timberlands West Coast car-

ries out this shameful ‘overcut’ behind a public relations facade promoting itself as a ‘world class’ sustainable forest manager. This is not the first time Orikaka has been logged. Fifty years ago, a mill operated near the mouth of the Orikaka River, with a steam-powered winch dragging rimu, matai and kahikatea logs from the surrounding country. At about this time, the railway through the Buller Gorge was completed. An old mill worker told me that when first railcar on the line sounded its horn, as it passed through a patch of dense forest, keruru (native pigeons) flew up everywhere. ‘There were miles of pigeons. A mob went up, of three or four hundred, off the white pines, he recalls.

rikaka Forest was named for its O birdlife. To pre-European Maori it was a place where kaka were snared. According to G. Mitchell, author of Place Names of Buller County, birdsnaring parties travelled from the north of Nelson province down to the Orikaka River, while Westland Maoris came from as far south as Hokitika. These trapping

parties are reputed to have secured large numbers of birds in the Orikaka River basin for their winter food supply. And the harvest of the birds didn’t end then. Hungry families at the mining township of Burnetts Face, which borders on Orikaka, ate kaka in the Depression. They would scratch a tin matchbox with a file to attract the birds, then shoot them for the

pot. Even then, birds like kaka and kereru were protected by law. A woman who grew up in one of the railway camps in the Buller Gorge said they often ‘poached’ kereru. They made sure the birds were plucked and the heads cut off before bringing them home. Looking at the geography of Orikaka, it is easy to imagine it as a haven for wildlife.

Unsustainable logging in the Buller region he logging of Orikaka is replicated at several places on the West Coast, parin the Buller region, including nearby Ohikanui, Charleston, Mokihinui, and Seddonville forests. Native timber logging by the Government-owned company, Timberlands West Coast, is thought to continue in as many as 24 forests. The exact number is hard to determine as this aspect of company operations is generally kept secret. The forests worked by Timberlands lie in a band extending from near Karamea in northern Westland, to just south of Whataroa, a distance roughly equal to that from Wellington or Auckland to Lake Taupo. The forests of the Buller River are particularly vulnerable. When Forest and Bird unsuccessfully opposed the felling in Orikaka, through the Environment Court last year, around 80 percent was still pristine. (The road edges had previously been logged by the old Forest Service.) By December this year, when present logging has to stop by decree of the previous Government, Orikaka will have been stripped of its big trees. A similar situation prevails in other Buller forests. This heavy logging of big podocarp trees (largely rimu), which even Timberlands recognises as unsustainable, was permitted under the West Coast Accord. The 1986 Accord provided for such logging as a transitional measure while the local industry converted to milling forests of introduced trees, mainly plantation pine. Forest and Bird has argued that adequate supplies of plantation pine are already available, and that the industry has had ample time to make the switch. Critics of the Government’s involvement in native forest logging say that besides being State-owned, Timberlands West Coast is effectively subsidised by the Government through the very low royalty it pays to the Crown- $10-15 per cen-turies-old tree. This makes the logging very lucrative for the company. Nor is the company required to provide any financial return to the Crown and the public as owners of the forest. (It has only paid a dividend once in 10 years.)

For a start, it is a low altitude forest, rising from just 50 metres to 400 metres above sea level. Running through the middle is a series of limestone cliffs which, through erosion, have produced nutrient-rich talus slopes and deep soils growing huge podocarps (matai, totara, rimu, miro and kahikatea). The east-west lie of the cliffs shelters the forest from cold winter gales. In a narrow band under the cliffs the podocarps dominate, but beech forms the bulk of the forest. In one of the logging areas I visited recently, there is only about one rimu per hectare. But they are big trees, averaging one metre in diameter. This is where the helicopter comes into its own. The sparseness of the rimu meant it was previously uneconomic to log by the conventional method, using a log hauler and a dense network of roads, so this part of the forest remained untouched until now. It is not until you see the logs piled up on the landing sites that you appreciate how many trees are being removed. In one six-day period in February, the helicopter extracted 550. What becomes of the kaka, kiwi, native bats, blue duck and other threatened species that are hanging on in Orikaka? How do they cope with the stripping of the big trees and the invasion of the logging gangs and the helicopter? Timberlands’ public relations claims their logging is so benign that the ecology is enhanced and wildlife actually benefits. I prefer to look at it this way. Imagine a

pair of kaka that are nesting high in a beech tree. Their whistling and calling are reminders of a time when large and noisy flocks of kaka were obvious throughout the forest. Most of the remaining birds are probably male because predators kill the females on the nest. Our pair has three fertile eggs and so far they’ve evaded stoats, rats and possums. Enter the loggers. They chainsaw a big rimu nearby, and the noise of it crashing through the understorey and smashing on

the ground drives the female off the nest. But despite more trees going down, she does return and the eggs survive. Three weeks later, the big helicopter arrives to lift the logs. It hangs in the air right beside the nest, making a deafening roar. Again the kaka flies off, this time leaving three new

chicks. The chopper remains in the area all day, and all the next day, and the next. This time the kaka doesn’t return. urther up the Buller River at Nelson Lakes National Park, the Department of Conservation has a ‘mainland island’ project with the aim of saving the kaka. (See this issue, page 18.) DoC protects the forest, traps predators and has been very successful with kaka breeding. The project is a success story. But what a contradiction that just 70 kilometres away in Orikaka, a State-owned logging company is trashing kaka habitat. The Government is saving the kaka at Nelson Lakes while destroying the habitat of these forest parrots at Orikaka! Hopefully, the logging will soon be brought to an end. The Government is negotiating a compensation package with West Coast interests that will see investment in exotic forestry, tourism and infrastructure instead. Already pines provide the bulk of West Coast saw-logs and output is expected to double by 2003 as more plantations mature. Most Coast mills have made the conversion to pine and currently their main problem is a shortage of sawlogs. There are not enough forestry workers and courses are being run to train more. Tourism is growing fast on the West Coast and it now rivals farming as the biggest industry. People come from all over the world to see the rich forests and wildlife of the northern West Coast. Paparoa National Park is already the busiest site on the Coast drawing more tourists than the glaciers. Let’s celebrate the new millennium with

an end to rainforest logging and start the job of rebuilding these priceless ecosystems so our grandchidren can again experience the marvel of 300 kereru rising from a kahikatea forest.

Forest and Bird member PETE +. LUSK = ‘lives. in Westport and is _ also involved with Native Forest Action and the Buller Conservation Group.

How long can Orikaka last The National Government decreed that logging in the Buller region should end in December 2000, six years earlier than originally planned. The new Government has announced that ‘rimu logging on Crown-managed land will be stopped as soon as practicable. On the basis of the harvest in recent months, conservationists say there'll be little left of Orikaka to save if felling continues at the present rate for another seven months.