Access to Waipoua Forest in New Zealand and its giant kauri Tane Mahuta could be closed to the public to protect the trees from a fast spreading killer disease. Source: The New Zealand Herald
Te Roroa iwi has talked with officials about imposing a ban as a drastic measure to protect kauri from a deadly fungus-like disease in the 12,000-hectare Northland forest. Track bans are already in place in Auckland.
About 250,000 visitors pass through Waipoua every year, most stopping to gaze at the 2000 year old tree with its 4.4 metre diameter trunk, as well as the shorter but stouter Te Matua Ngahere.
Kauri dieback is caused by Phytophthora taxon agathis (PTA). A small tree succumbs in weeks, a large one in five to 10 years but government funding for research into PTA runs out next year.
Te Rorora spokeman Will Ngakuru said a ban was a precautionary measure being considered to save the forest.
“We don’t want to stop people going to the forest but we do care about the trees,” he said.
PTA is carried in soil and a ban would likely slow the disease’s spread on tourist’s shoes, buying time to research preventions and cures. Other measures include sanitation stations and boardwalks.
Ngakuru represented the iwi on a multi-agency kauri dieback team that included councils and government. He said Waipoua may have been a launch pad for kauri dieback disease after infected seedlings raised in the New Zealand Forestry service nurseries between the 1940s and 1960s were distributed to other forests. It was possible PTA entered the forest after World War II when the army brought contaminated machinery from the Pacific Islands.
Department of Conservation Kaui Coast area manager Mei Hardy-Birch said any decision on closing the forest would be made as a part of “robust public debate”. Ultimately, DoC would make the decision though Te Roroa had a big influence on decisions in the area.
“We have to take their values and their conservation principals into consideration,” Hardy-Birch said. “This might be one of the pracdtical tools that we need to apply in order for there to continue to b =e kauri forests in the future.”
Kauri dieback expert Nick Waipara, principal adviser of biosecurity at Auckland Council said that surveillance has shown that Waipoua Forest is highly contaminated with PTA and it was not just in little pockets.
Auckland Council’s parks recreation and heritage forum chairmwoman Sandra Coney said a ban was already in place on some tracks in Hunua and Waitakere, which were clean of PTA.
In February she and representatives from other councils asked biosecurity minister Nathan Guy to ensure further research would be funded beyond mid-2014. From 2009-2014 the Minister of Primary Industry (MPI) contributed NZ$4.8 million of the NZ$6 million cost.
“It came as a complete shock that funding looks like it is not going to be renewed. I don’t think a lot of members of the public have twigged to how serious this is,” she said.
“We’ve already got 13% of the kauri areas in the Waitakeres infected. The trees do not recover form this. It’s completely fatal. It’s heartbreaking and the Government’s stance on t his is devastating.”
Guy’s office said the minister was happy to meet councils on the issue and that it was committed to the kauri dieback program after 2014 and a decision on funding would be made once arrangement had been finalized. It had already spent NZ$656,220 on research and NZ$339,269 on projects due to be completed by June 2014.
