Crafar farm sale offers once-in-a-lifetime chance for a Tōtara National Park
Tuesday 3 August 2010, 2:56PM
By Green Party
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The sale of the Crafar farms in the Waikato offer New Zealanders a window of opportunity to reconnect the Pureora forest and create a Tōtara National Park, the Green Party said today.
“The Crafar farm sale gives New Zealanders a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to unite the Northern and Southern parts of the Pureora Forest Park, enabling the creation of a Tōtara National Park,” said Green Party Co-leader Dr Russel Norman.
“If the Crafar farms fall into foreign ownership, the opportunity to create a Tōtara National Park will be lost and this once great forest will forever remain in pieces.”
The tōtara found within Pureora are among the oldest living things in New Zealand. Of the 150 ancient tōtara remaining in New Zealand, up to three-quarters are found in Pureora. Many were here long before Maori arrived.
“These majestic tōtara are our living heritage. The Pureora forests are our last best pieces of lowland forest in the North Island. They’re home to an abundance of native birds, containing one of the largest remaining populations of the rare North Island kokako,” said Dr Norman.
“By replanting part of the Crafar land, we could reconnect the fragmented Pureora Forest making one large, continuous forest with huge benefits for the wildlife that lives there.
“The area also forms the headwaters of the Whanganui and Waikato Rivers. Restoring this area would have downstream benefits to water quality in both rivers.
“National Park status would be the icing on the cake giving the area the status (and the tourist revenue) it deserves.”
Pureora also contains nationally-important wetlands and shrublands. The wetlands are some of the least-modified in the North Island and still host rare plants like the stout water milfoil and water brome.
Many of the shrublands are known as frost flats, and are home to endangered plants found nowhere else in New Zealand.
“Kiwis are passionate about these wild spaces and the giants still living within them. If we love these last remaining trees, then we need to protect them.”
Google map of the area in question:
http://bit.ly/bLKrMD