I read with consternation a heading in last Saturday's Evening Post; 'Enough sacrificed for conservation.' On to the article itself and I was completely amazed. Our Minister of Forests, Venn Young told a native forest seminar "that it would not be fair to ask sawmilling communities, which have already made substantial sacrifices for conservation policies, to do more." This statement would be quite fair if it was the sawmilling communities making the sacrifices. But rather, it has been the case of New Zealanders thoughtlessly sacrificing their last native forests!

Our indigenous sawmillers have certainly had a hard time, after all, only 95% of North Is lowland forest has been removed (from NFAC research). So we're left with the giant figure of 5%. Incredibly the Forest Service has proposals to log King Country remnants. From the four planning options indicated in last week's Salient, there however seemed to be a chance for conservationists to save the remnants by backing the no-logging option. But, following up his earlier statements Mr Young indicated that he was not prepared to support the no-logging proposals.

Job creation?

He said that to meet the objectives of the Conservation movements would mean breaking more contracts to sawmillers. That's rather unusual, in the well researched NFAC/F&B submissions it was evident that in the case of the King Country forests there are no legal obligations to log in force! Mr Young also spoke about unemployment, yet the number of people who would be engaged in logging, according to NFAC/F&B would number less than twenty for ten years maximum.

At the same time logging of the forest would be another death knell to King Country tourism. Throughout the summer months guided tours were taken through Pureora forest. Its obvious that tourism as a job-creator would in the long term be more economically and socially profitable. Where are the masses of unemployed millers in the King Country? When the extremely inefficient KC Barryville mill was closed three years ago the workers left the district. These "financial loss or gain" arguments are ridiculous, how can Mr Young give a dollar and cents value to the last remnants of virgin lowland forest?

It is an interesting 'co-incidence' that the KC plans cover an area in the electorate of Mr Bolger. He is facing a strong and determined challenge by Social Credit in this election year. Incidentally, Social Credit has a more conservationist policy than does the National party. Some would say the proposed 'remnant logging' is really an election lolly.

Whirinaki and democracy

For the last part in this episode, an indication of New Zealand's 'democracy'. In the case of Whirinaki a great majority of bone fide submissions were pro-conservation. Whirinaki is now being logged. With the recent case of the Westland plans the 4600 submissions received by the Forest Service were massively pro-conservation as I believe were submissions on the King Country plans. Yet Mr Young says he will not support the conservation movement's objectives. Ever remember being told by other New Zealanders "don't march, picket or use militant action, it doesn't work. Go through the recognised means of writing submissions and letters blah blah." Well, with conservation matters, people have gone by the book for the last fifty years, but I doubt whether the authorities have ever read it. This raises the question of whether demonstrative action is the only alternative left to the conservation movement?

Neil Anderson