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WORLDWIDE
FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS
New
Zealand Cuts Logging Contracts
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Forest Networking a Project of Forests.org
http://forests.org/ -- Forest
Conservation Archives
http://forests.org/web/ -- Discuss Forest
Conservation
05/17/00
OVERVIEW
& COMMENTARY
New
Zealand's government has announced it is cutting short logging
contracts
on harvesting of its West Coast rainforests.
There is to
be a
transition period until early 2002, which may be too long.
However,
unlike the United States, Australia and other well to do,
vocal
proponents of international forest conservation, New Zealand
has
shown it can talk the talk AND walk the walk.
The US and
Australia
would be well advised to get their own forest conservation
situation
in order, as New Zealand is moving to do, prior to mouthing
off and
dictating to others. There are many
countries that would
benefit
from reexamining their levels of forest exploitation, and
canceling
excessive levels of logging that are already contracted on
public
lands. Intact, large stands of ancient
forests are
immeasurably
more valuable intrinsically, ecologically and
economically
than to be liquidated to make throwaway consumer items.
Countries
that realize this now, and make policy adjustments, will be
better
off in the long term. Countries that
continue to pursue
unsustainable,
over exploitative forest and other resource
development,
even if they are rich now, are doomed to become
ecologically
depauperate. A bust inevitably follows
the timber boom,
and
these countries will struggle with issues of sustainability for
centuries
to come.
g.b.
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RELAYED
TEXT STARTS HERE:
Title: NZ opts for 2002 end to West Coast rimu
forestry
Source: c 2000 Reuters Limited. All rights
reserved.
Date: May 16, 2000
By: Marion Rae
WELLINGTON
- New Zealand's Labour-led government said on Monday it
would
end the harvesting of West Coast native rimu timber in 2002 -
cutting
short seven-year logging contracts.
It was
planned to end rimu harvesting on March 31, 2002, Prime
Minister
Helen Clark told reporters following a weekly cabinet
meeting.
"It's
going to stop, these rainforests will go into the conservation
estate
and they will be there in perpetuity both for their intrinsic
value
and also of course for the ongoing benefit of the visitor and
tourism
industry on the West Coast," she said.
The
government has previously cancelled West Coast beech logging
contracts
on land controlled by state-owned Timberlands - while
proposing
a NZ$100 million fund to help the sparsely-populated region
develop
new industries.
Finance
Minister Michael Cullen and Deputy Prime Minister Jim Anderton
this
month boosted the fund offer to NZ$120 million and promised West
Coast
mayors that they would argue in cabinet for the continuation of
rimu
logging for the seven years remaining on the contracts.
But
cabinet decided to cancel the contracts, using force majeure
clauses.
The
government has also rejected the view of the Green Party, on whom
it
relies for majority support in parliament, that there should be an
immediate
end to logging.
"The
key consideration in reaching the date of March 31, 2002, is to
minimise
or obviate any job losses that might arise had we chosen a
shorter
transition period," Forestry Minister Pete Hodgson said.
Rimu
will continue to be harvested on privately-owned land, but only
after
stringent criteria for the sustainable logging of the resource
have
been met.
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