Waipoua State Forest: Forest Sanctuary W AIPOUA KAUR! FOREST NEW ZEALAND FOREST SERVICE Information Series No. 14 A grove of kauri. NEW ZEALAND FOREST SERVICE Information Series No. 1 4- WAIPOUA AU FOREST Issued under the Authority ef THE HON. E. B. CORBETT, Minister of Forests ALEX. R. ENTRICAN Director of Forestry WELLINGTON: R. E. OWEN, GOVERNMENT PRINTER Contents PAGE INTRODUCTION 3 THE KA URI FOREST 4 A CLIFF ON TUTAMOE MOUNTAIN 8 TERRAIN OF WAIPOUA 8 HISTORICAL NOTES 8 THE FOREST SANCTUARY 11 PROTECTION FROM FIRE 14 Acknowledgments THE wooD ENGRAVINGS are by E. Mervyn Taylor, of Wellington, from drawings made in the· forest. THE PHOTOGRAPHS are by Messrs. J. H. Johns and E. P. Christensen, respectively. J. Witten-Hannah, M.A., EDITOR. · The Wrzipoua River. W aipoua Kauri Forest INTRODUCTION Tms BOOKLET marking the setting aside of 22,500 acres of W aipoua State Forest as a forest sanctuary may well be prefaced by a brief statement of what would have been involved in the normal course of forest management. From the year 1930 the Forest Service !1ad administrative authority to begin in a small and tentative way at W aipoua the practice of 4 a dynamic forestry which would have been of the utmost significance for the perpetuation of kauri as an important forest species. Ecolo­ gists, the scientists who study the modes of life of forest plants and animals and their relations to their surroundings, have given to foresters the concept of species succeeding species in a forest. From this foresters have developed the concept of arresting the succession of species at the stage where it would be most useful, and where the desired species could be reproduced by means of natural regenera­ tion. Managed in this way, Waipoua Forest would have fulfilled the multiple purpose of forest park and botanical museum, protection forest and production forest. Waipoua Forest is, however, the last kauri forest of any size, and it is now the public wish that the main kauri stands should be reserved in a forest sanctuary to represent a natural kauri forest 3 THE KADRI FOREST MURI FORESTS occurred. in historical times only in New Zealand north of latitude 38, that is, north from about Katikati 0n the East Coast and Kawhia on the West Coast; but within recent geological times, when the climate was kinder than it is now, the tree occurred in both the North and the South Islands. The kauri forests of the Great Barrier Island, Coromandel, Puhipuhi, and Russell, to name but some of the finest, occurred on the eastern side of the kauri range. These forests have long since disappeared; their magnificence is now only suggested here and there by dense groups of stumps indicating felled trees, and even the stumps are fast disappearing. Towards the western part of the tree's distribution these forests thinned out and kauri became more and more inter­ mingled with other kinds of forest and with other trees, principally taraire. Altogether, kauri forest, judging from old records and the study of soil types-for kauri profoundly affects the soil upon which it grows-occupied probably 2,000,000 acres. Not more than 25,000 acres of this remains, but there are many thousands of acres of good regeneration where kauri forest once existed. Since almost the beginning of this century, Waipoua Forest has contained the largest remnant of kauri. The occurrence Gf the tree in this forest is typical for western forests: kauri is present in small to large groves more or less mixed with taraire, or as scattered trees in mainly taraire forest. Although the total area of forest in W aipoua containing kauri is about 9,000 acres, little is in really heavy kauri stands. Kauri trees are mostly large in the virgin forest, and their huge crowns rise well above all other trees. The densest area of. uniformly good trees, known as Cathedral Grove, lies to the west of the main highway. The two largest remaining kauri trees in New Zealand are also in the sanctuary, and are known as "Tanemahuta" and "Te Matua Ngahere ". "Tanemahuta" is estimated to be 1,200 years old; its height is 1 70 ft., its girth 11 ft. above the ground is 45 ft. 6 in., the height from ground level to the first branch is 45 ft., and the area of crown spread is 11,600 square feet. " Te Matua Ngahere" has a girth at breast height of 53 ft., the girth below its crown bulge is 52 ft. 6 in., and the height from ground level to the first branches is 36 ft. The kauri forest owes its striking appearance to the main tree itself and to kauri grass and Gahnia, anothet grass-like plant, which form impenetrable thickets on the forest floor. Apart from kauri, Waipoua Forest consists of a mixture of rimu, northern rata, tawa, and towai, and there are small areas of kahikatea forest on wet ground. 4 " Te M atua N gahere ," 1- *1 t t t t t t ,~ Legend WCTipoua .Forest' Bovndary Boundo-ry ot=" Sanctuary Kawri Forest' WAIPOUA, FORES While the virgin forest contains negligible kauri regeneration, the burnt edges dominated by tea-tree contain a great deal of it, wherever seed trees are present. All stages of young kauri are to be seen, from seedlings to 1i.ckers, the best and some of the thickest of it being in a clearing on the rnain highway, where an attempt was once made to burn the forest. These areas of regeneration demon­ strate adequately the promise that kauri has for permanent forest management. A CLIFF ON TUTAMOE MOUNTAIN A FORMER SURVEYOR-GENERAL of New Zealand, S. Smith, wrote of his discovery of a giant kauri in Tutamoe Forest near \Vaipoua, as follows: " I was conducting the triangulation north of Auckland in 1870-7,1, and on one occasion was in aJvance of my men, they carrying the instruments and myself using my long knife to cut a track up one of the south-east spurs of Tutamoe Mountain, when I sa,iV· out of the corner of my eye, in a slight Jepression, what I took to be a cliff. But as I advanced a few paces I saw that I could look around it, and then it dawned on me that it was a kauri tree of enormous size ! I think one of the men measured the tree with his arm, and at any rate 've came to the conclusion that it was just a chain ( 66 ft. round) ". TERRAIN OF WAIPOUA \VAIPOUA STATE FOREST is situated on the North Auckland Peninsula, south of Hokianga Harbour but in Hokianga County, and 150 rnilGs by road north of A:uckland City. The Waipoua country is hilly with long, mostly level-topped ridges running generally east to west and frequently rising to more than 1,000 ft. above sea level. In the north­ eastern corner of the forest a ridge rises to 2, 100 ft. above sea level. The ridges are broken by gullies, but they have rounded sides and their faces are not steep. There are many small streams, which rise rapidly when rain falls. The Waipoua River itself is a true mountain torrent, and where it passes behind the high ridge of Toetochatiko ( 1, 700 ft.) it has cut for itself a gorge several hundred feet deep and with precipitous sides. The W airau River tends to be more sluggish and has deeper and muddier waters. HISTORICAL NOTES THE WAIPOUA BLOCK of 35,300 acres was purchased for £2,200 in a "deed made the eighth day of February 1876 between Her Majesty Queen Victoria of the one part and Parore te Awha of Kaihu Kaipara and Tiopira Kinaki of Waipoua of the other part". Parore and Tiopira both lived on these lands before the Treaty of 8 Kauri Snail: The kauri snail or pupurangi belongs to a large group of carnivorous snails found only in New Zealand. It is found in kauri forests but shuns the inimediate vicinity of the kauri tree because it is generally too dry for the worms on which the snail feeds. W aitangi. They quarrelled, and in a battle at Ikarunganui Parore with the Ngapuhi defeated Tiopira, who led the Raroa, Ngatiwhatua, and U riohau. Parore aftenvards went to live at Kaihu and Tiopira and his people went back to live at W aipoua ; Parore asserted that they were under his protection while Tiopira maintained that he went back in his own right. In 1874 a Land Purchase Officer, Mr. E. T. Brissenden, negotiated with Tiopira for the purchase of Waipoua. Tiopira asked surveyors, Messrs. H. and D. Wilson, to survey the block, but Parore, who claimed the land by right of conquest, threatened to stop the survey. A private land purchase agent, Mr. ]. W. Preece, persuaded him, however, to withdraw his objection. The Native Land Court finally awarded the block to Parore and Tiopira in equal shares. The land was conveyed to the Crown, and in a Proclamation dated 5 September 1876 the Waipoua Block was declared waste lands of the Crown. W aipoua was originally intended for settlement, but the policy for using this block of land changed after the passing of the New Zealand State Forests Act in 1885, and on 1 June l 906 an area of 22,650 acres at Waipoua was reserved for State forest purposes. 9 In 1907 Dr. Leonard Cockayne carried out a botanical survey of vVaipoua Kanri Forest under instructions from the Minister of Lands, the Hon. Robert McNab; his report published in 1908 was the first detailed account of the conditions of plant life and formation of a kauri forest, and was an event of the first importance both for the sciences of botany and ecology and for forest administration.