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this country are established and settlement is the first aim.' So the service did regulate the cutting and charged for logs delivered to mills. But prices of sawn timber were then controlled politically at a low level. Felling continued until politicians changed their tune from the above, which was not until virtually all land capable of being farmed had been cleared. 3. '... the concern of Treasury that the Forest Service was not adequately accountable for its commercial performance as a timber grower, and was excessively vulnerable to political intervention in decision-making.' This is rubbish. Kaingaroa forest, for example, could not have been established more cheaply. It was the intervention of Treasury, itself, that laid the basis to the main sale from the forest at an absurdly low price for an even more absurdly long period. Treasury also had a hand in the recent sale of State Forests at a third to a quarter of their market value and to buyers, mentioned above, who then entered into the log trade. 4. '... the multi-objective mandate of the Forest Service embodied conflicting objectives whose effect was to confer great discretionary power on decision-makers and to reduce the organization's accountability to all its clients.' No examples are given of course! I am sure that past Ministers of Forests rise up in their wrath when they read this. And one wonders if it is intended to include the remarkable transition from the use of superb NZ fine timbers, kauri, rimu, totara, etc. to a virtually unknown 'punk' timber, radiata pine; establish a total industry on it including substantial exports of commodities ranging from furniture components to pulp and paper. Or perhaps Salmon had in mind the mountain protection forest now safely in the hands of a 'conservation' organization! Yet the Forest Service, all its years, safeguarded it from fires which were lit constantly along its edges to gain more agricultural land. And the Service was given control of introduced wild animals when there was despair about the havoc they were wreaking inside these steep forests. The only comprehensive surveys ever made of these forests and what was happening was by the Service. And the only properly trained hunting force was trained by it. Satisfactory control was achieved. Now, only ten years after the demise of the Service, the whole country is seething with opossums and serious inroads to protection forest are being made by escaped animals. 5. 'NGOs undertake to acknowledge the importance of plantation forestry ... wood products and energy on a sustainable basis ...' There was not a whimper from NGOs when the State Forests were sold without any conditions of sustainability. Nor was there any objection when large East Coast planted protection forest, safeguarding farmland, was sold without even stipulation regarding replanting following harvesting. Where were the 'conservationists'? No doubt Salmon includes these forests in his 'uneconomic activities such as planting in remote areas.' 6. 'There has been a re-definition of an appropriate more limited role for politicians in forest sector decisionmaking ...' So we get sale of State Forests at about one
quarter of their value; a huge and growing log export trade; another very large planting boom, this time by farmers on good farm land while, at the same time, meat-works are going out of production, adding to unemployment. In my judgement New Zealand has lost, at least for a long, long time, the basis of a sound, exotic forest estate that could supply a very large wood products industry. And the damage was done by acompact between politicians, elected for 3-year terms, and conservationists. Forestry, which is inevitably long term and therefore of national importance in many ways, particularly in land use, must depend on political understanding. What has been missing in New Zealand has been long term political constancy which needs to be assisted and advised by a Forest Service of some kind. Happenings now are unpredictable. LINDSAY POOLE 22A Waru Street, Wellington 4, New Zealand
27 September 1994
APOLOGY Dear Sir, I would like to apologize to Dr Mary Hobley of ODI for omitting her name from the bibliography at the end of my letter on 'Paradigms' (Vol. 73(2), June 1994). Since arriving in China it has taken some time to be reunited with all my papers and the reference I used was incomplete. The reference should have read:- Gilmour, D.A., King, G.C. and Hobley, M. 1989. Management of forests for local use in the hills of Nepal. I. Changing forest management paradigms. Journal of World Forest Management 4:93110. Since writing my letter I have learned that Mary was responsible for introducing A. Foster-Carter's paper (1976 From Rostow to Gunter Frank: Conflicting paradigms in the analysis of underdevelopment.' WorldDevelopmenr4: 167180) to the Nepal-Australia Forestry Programme (NAFP) and without her seemingly paradigms would not have been incorporated into their programme so early. JOHNSTUDLEY
6 January 1995
NEWS OF MEMBERS Mikael Grut, who retired from the World Bank in Washington as Senior Forestry Specialist in August 1994, has settled in Wimbledon, England. He is engaged in various writing projects, and has also undertaken forest economics consultancies for the Overseas Development Administration in Belize, for the European Community in Suriname, and for SGS Forestry in Guyana.