At the same time we are mourning. We are mourning for those forests that have already been destroyed - like the beautiful Ianthe, Waitangi and Whanganui lowland forests sacrificed to the West Coast Accord just a few years ago.
We are also mourning for those that will be destroyed as a result of delaying that time that is to come. The so-called Buller overcut, a regime which extracts most of the merchantable timber, will see the slaughter of the magnificent Orikaka complete by August this year. Orikaka is home to endangered populations of great spotted kiwi and kaka which are regarded as of national significance.
The courts have already ruled that the Buller overcut is not mandated by the West Coast Accord. That slaughter could have been avoided by issuing a section 13 notice to the Board of Timberlands this week requiring an end to so-called "unsustainable" logging, and stopping the overcut next month. As it is, it is only the National Government, which brought forward the date for ending the Buller overcut by 5 years, which can claim any credit for saving the rest of the Buller forests.
We are also mourning that the logging of Saltwater and Okarito, dense rimu lowland forests in south Westland will continue another 2 years, to avoid disruption to the manufacture of coffee tables. These forests are of National Park quality. The Minister described them last week as Jurassic. They are certainly important on a world scale, not just in this country. In fact, the BBC programme "Walking with dinosaurs" was filmed in Saltwater forest and I wonder how much the film team spent on the Coast to the benefit of those communities.
While so-called "sustainable" logging, with single tree extraction by helicopter, is less damaging to the forest it is still an unnecessary removal of habitat. We recently received a message from a Timberlands contracted ecologist, which reads
"I was disturbed today to hear that rimu logging may continue for eight more years. This would be more devastating to the environment than 800 years of sustainable beech logging. Rimu are the most important single component of the forest ecosystem to many species of birds and other animals."
Well, despite the efforts of Michael Cullen and Jim Anderton, the logging will not continue for eight more years, and I want to pay tribute to the commitment of Ministers like Helen Clark and Sandra Lee, but two years is still two years too long.
I read just the other day that Nzers stopped shooting godwits, those amazing threatened migratory birds which battle their way here from Siberia each year, only in 1941. I predict that in a few years young Nzers will be equally outraged that it took till 2002 for their forbears to stop felling giant rimu.
It is timely as we reach the end of the long running saga of the NZ West Coast forests to record some of the history of that debate.
We have been through a long transition from the days when forests were an obstacle in the way of farmland or mining, and men proved their manhood by how many giants they could fell before lunch. The debate on the beeches raged during the early 70s. I first heard of it when living in Europe and people were approaching me about their concern for the international importance of these forests. That was a proposal to clear fell for woodchips all the area of beech Timberlands currently has, plus all the area since put into reserves.
It led to the birth of the Beech Forest Action Council, later to become the Native Forest Action Council, which won the argument under the slogan "We will fight them on the beeches".
Meanwhile logging of rimu, the most valuable species, was ongoing relentlessly, even though until quite recently it was still used for concrete boxing.
In 1977 I collected signatures on the Maruia Declaration, a petition which asked that all clearfelling of native forests on public land be ended. We collected more than 300,000 signatures - 10% of the total population of NZ, man, woman and child. Still the logging went on.
Foresters then tried alternatives to clearfelling - a series of failed experiments like logging in strips which just led to the tress that were left dying of windthrow or disease or pests or disturbance of the water table. There was the famous selective logging, which meant you selected all the most valuable trees and left the trash.
Finally in 1986 the West Coast Accord, brokered by the Ministry for the Environment, signed by some conservation groups (not all) and by the coasters. The forests were partitioned - some, south of the Cook River, to the world heritage area, some to the new Paparoa National Park, some for so-called sustainable logging, and some for continued destruction under the "Buller overcut" to keep the mills going. Timberlands West Coast was created to manage the continued logging.
The Buller mills did still close because Timberlands got a better deal for the timber by selling it outside the Buller area and in fact only one mill on the coast has been sawing rimu - at Ruatapu near Hokitika.
Lowland forest with the highest ecological values was inadequately represented in the protected areas and the conservation movement was divided about whether too much had been given away in order to protect some.
The resurrection of a beech scheme in the 1990s resurrected the controversy. At the centre of the argument was the concept of sustainable logging. That was a more complex argument, not just about sustaining the annual harvest of wood from year to year, which is not difficult with beech but tends to turn the forest into something like a plantation - but about sustaining the integrity and ecological values of the forest itself. There is still scientific disagreement about whether the age structure, species diversity, and numbers of protected birds would be sustained in the long term. And those forests are too important to be the subject of a giant experiment.
But in the end, it is not just about science. We have lost most of our forests. Especially our lowland forests. Most Nzers have now said "enough". These forests should be valued for their beauty, their biodiversity, their cultural and spiritual values, and their ecotourism potential.
This point was not reached without massive work by many people because most of Nz was simply not aware of what was being done to their forests in their name as taxpayers. I acknowledge the work of ECO and Forest and Bird over many years. I acknowledge the courage and imagination and perseverance of Native Forest Action who sat in the trees in the wet and the cold, until NZ took notice. That this logging will now end is their victory, and I salute them.
During that campaign we saw tactics not used in Nz before and it is worrying that environmental campaigns will probably never be the same again. Tactics imported to this country, some opf which cannot be pinned on any party definitively, included SLAPP suits - legal proceedings for the main purpose of keeping people quiet; the framing of environmentalists with the planting of a fake bomb on a helicopter to try to associate the conservation campaign with violence; alleged intimidation of protesters by helicopters swinging logs; the formation of apparently spontaneous groups of citizens to support logging, who were later revealed to be closely connected with the company; infiltration of environmental groups; and the use of PR consultants not just to put the company's case but to orchestrate a huge campaign to influence government policy - the policy of the shareholding taxpayers.
It is worth noting that Timberlands' payments to Shandwicks its PR consultants peaked at nearly $700,000 a year, compared with much much smaller amounts spent on possum control in the forests, or community sponsorship.
This Bill is about ending the West Coast Accord, after recognising that it was an agreement with the West Coast people and that some alternative economic package is needed in return to help them adjust. That package has been generous, especially as no logging has yet been stopped.
The Accord has run its course. Public opinion has moved on. Over a million cubic metres of native timber has been extracted from the Coast since it was signed. The Accord was clear that it was trying to establish a transition until the exotic plantations on the Coast were ready. They now substantially are. In fact the reason why there will be few if any job losses on the Coast as a result of stopping the native logging is that on top of the 190,000 cu m of pine a year currently available there will be an additional 30,000 coming on stream in each of the next three years.
It is indeed time to move on. We have grown rich on the proceeds of forests we did not plant or manage. It was a once only windfall gain. It is time to replace that wealth and use our considerable expertise in indigenous forestry to plan, plant and maintain indigenous forests for the future. There is no reason why our past stupidity should condemn the future to nothing but pine. It will take a little longer to have plantations of totara, beech and kauri, but the sooner we start, the sooner they will be ready.
Subscribe to email newsletters
