Pureora Forest Park - Stepping into New Zealand's Past
There is something about this forest.
Old. Ancient. Thrumming with life.
I feel it seep into my skin, right down to my bones and my veins. Wrap around my throat and tingle at my fingertips. This forest has seen wars, it has seen love, it has seen death and blood and fire and loss. This forest has seen birds now only found in the ink of history books and as static bones in museums. It has seen man and beast. It has seen much of the world’s past, both with our presence and without.
I feel at home here. I wrap this ancient feeling around my shoulders like a cloak and hug it close to me as I wander through the sunlight dappled forest, bird song heavy in my ears and the coolness settling in my skin.
Out of fire and death, this forest emerged. The Pureora Forest, a green patch in the middle of the North Island that is not pine nor cow speckled pasture. Because long ago, before Europeans arrived in New Zealand, the King Country was rich green not with rolling pastures as it is now, but with ancient forests. Maori called it Te Nehe-nehe-nui (the great forest).
After the Taupo Eruption in AD 130 smothered the flora and fauna in this region with a blanket of ash, a new forest emerged. Like the phoenix of lore, the forest giants of New Zealand, Rimu, tōtara, kahikatea, sprung from the destruction and grew into the Pureora Forest that we have today.
I felt like a child walking through this forest. How could I not, being surrounded by all these ancient giants. Trees that have rooted here for thousands of years. Before human’s swarmed with axes and saws, to make this forest bend to its will. Before they hacked at their trunks to gather wood for fence posts and state housing and precious butter boxes. This forest has stood here for many many years. That is why I always feel like a young child wandering amongst these giants of bark and branches and leaves and fruit. Moss and ferns dangle off their many limbs like some kind of elegant shawl, soft greens and ever so delicate. Lichen lace like, climbs around and envelops the branches - a delicate dress of greens and greys.
The Pureora Forest is said to be one of the finest examples of a podocarp rainforest in the world and it is one of the last strands of native podocarp forests in New Zealand. And that is a tangible fact as you walk beneath the canopy.
As well as being an important ecosystem, the Pureora Forest is also a symbol. This living breathing mass of softly swaying green is a symbol of not only the past but also of what human spirit can achieve when pressed.
In 1840, New Zealand was still covered with around two thirds of virgin forest. This however was not an incentive to preserve this precious ecosystem, rather this was seen as a business opportunity. And thus, the native timber industry boomed. Pureora Forest was one of the last native forests to be opened up for milling and in 1946, the loggers descended with their tools and got to work logging large sections of this forest and replanting with exotics, such as eucalyptus trees. A village was established, the Pureora Village, which was to be a base for the needed timber and forestry workers. The village was a series of single men’s huts, new state houses for New Zealand Forestry Service workers, and mill workers houses. There was also a post and telegraph store with a much treasured phone, a school, a water supply from the nearby stream, trees for shelter, a telephone link to the nearby town of Benneydale, a village hall for dances, and a cookhouse. All the ingredients for a little community to form around the logging of the nearby forest. This continued for decades. Until, one group said enough was enough and drew their line in the sand.
In the 1970s, the forest was transformed from money maker into a stage for one of New Zealand’s most defining conservation moments to play out. Stephen King, not to be confused with the American thriller writer, but a New Zealand botanist was disgusted with the logging in Pureora. Not only was it turning such ancient trees into sawdust and money, but this logging was threatening some of New Zealand’s most endangered birds, such as the North Island kokako, who’s population was centralised in this forest. The kokako ended up becoming the symbol for the forthcoming protest action.
The protest started with rhetoric and a petition, but when that was not enough to halt the loggers, King and thirteen fellow members of the Native Forest Action Council drove to Pureora, obtained a camping permit and sent up camp in the canopy of six totora trees. They called for the end of logging in this forest.
Despite threats from the loggers, they held firm - becoming headline news all over the country. Eventually, the Forest Service conceded and halted logging in the area, while the Wildlife Service launched research about the Kokako, with logging of this forest coming to an end in 1982. In 1993, the Forest Act 1949 was amended to cease unsustainable logging of native forests and in 2002, an end came to all logging in state-owned native forests throughout New Zealand. These eco-warriors faced threats, were ridiculed for fighting for birds when at stake was peoples livelihoods, they went against government sanctioned native forest destruction, but they held firm in their beliefs and managed to save not only Pureora, but set a precedent to save our existing native forests.
Shadows of humanity’s metal grip on Pureora can still be seen to this day. An old crawler Caterpillar tractor that was used to pull tōtara posts and battens from the depth of the bush, abandoned when the engine went kaput, and left to be claimed by the forest. There is also a steam log hauler and boiler that have meet the same fate.
Walking through this forest, you are struck at what was. What New Zealand was before we wiped the majority of this wild from the map. It took thousands of years for this forest to grow, but only a couple of hundred for us to carve into it. Until only patches of this ancient world remained in New Zealand, hemmed in at all sides by the environment partially responsible for its disappearance, productive agricultural land. These pockets of ancient New Zealand still miraculously present must be protected. Safeguarded. Not only as remnants of the past, but as vital ecosystems to some of our most precious flora and fauna. The long-tailed bat occupies tree cavities in Pureora, while the kōkako, kaka, kererū, and korimako occupy the canopies. Some of our oldest trees stand tall in this forest and our uniquest flora flourish within its depths, such as the werewere kokako, the blue mushroom that can be found sprouting on our 50 dollar note and the Dactylanthus, New Zealand’s only fully parasitic flowering plant.
Without these pockets or mainland islands of old New Zealand that we have managed to safeguard, these creatures would not be able to survive.
This forest is not only our past, but our future. If we wish to retain our precious flora and fauna in New Zealand; if we don’t wish for future generations to only know the feel of tree bark beneath their palms or the sound of a kaka through a visit to the museum. Then, we must treat these remnants of ancient New Zealand as a precious space, one that must be preserved at any cost.