Timberlands Applies for Beech Logging Consent in NZ
10/1/99
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Title: Timberlands Applies for Beech Logging Consent in NZ
Source: The Press
Status: Copyright 1999, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: October 1, 1999
Byline: Peter Christian
Timberlands West Coast has formally lodged resource consent
applications for its controversial beech management programme.
Chief executive David Hilliard said the process was the final
statutory step required to start the programme. He said a fully
notified consent process was expected, with notification by the
Buller District Council on behalf of it and the Tasman Council
probably due within a few days.
Commenting on some political party promises to end to all such
logging, Mr Hilliard said Timberlands was a State-owned enterprise
answerable to the Government of the day.
"We're doing what the Government expects and directs us to do. If the
Government changed, we as an SOE would do what it wants us to do," he
said.
He said the beech consent process would take some months to complete
and a lot of public interest was expected.
That was a healthy thing but he advised parties who aimed to make
submissions to read the documentation carefully. While the process
would be long and costly it would be valuable as now much of the
project's detail would become clear.
There would be "no clearfelling, no chipping, forests destroyed,
converted into patchwork quilts, plantations, or ecological forests,"
he said.
Mr Hilliard said what was occurring was a rare opportunity for New
Zealand to take the lead in sustainable land management and to
establish a possible precedent for managing other rural and urban
landscapes.
It was a rare opportunity to move an industry up a step from
commodities to a low-volume high-value, high-employment scenario that
made use of natural processes and natural unmodified species, he
said.
It was also an opportunity to meet the same objective as was being
achieved in Okarito Forest where native bird numbers, including the
kakariki, were higher than 10 years ago.
The application covered a small-scale project of about 58,000ha and
in operation would produce about 46,000 trees a year.
Copies of the consent application would be available from locations
to be notified by the Buller District Council, and from Timberlands'
website soon.