A Northland conservationist is angry at the Government's tardy response to dealing with a disease which is killing the country's kauri trees, while acting with the utmost urgency to eliminate kiwifruit disease PSA.
Waipoua Forest Trust project manager Stephen King said bad walking tracks, a rampant pig population and humans and machines moving infected mud were resulting in a spread of kauri die-back disease phytophthora taxon agathis (PTA), which can kill a thousand-year-old giant in less than a decade.
PTA results in a yellowing of foliage, resin bleeding from the base of the trunk and eventually tree death.
Mr King said he believed trees would survive the disease if their roots were not put under so much stress by poorly placed and badly maintained metal forest tracks, which compacted soil and deprived the trees of oxygen.
"Our top priority should be to deal with those unnatural stresses to the forest -- the man-made stresses on the forest -- such as pigs and poor track design to enable the forest to use its natural defence mechanism to look after itself."
Mr King said he had told the Government in 1978 that laying metal tracks in Trounson Kauri Park would result in trees dying, but they did it anyway and, 10 years later, the trees started falling.
"We've known about the need to have board walks in kauri forests long before we knew about PTA and it shouldn't have taken this long and even now its taking too long.
"Look at how quickly the Government acted on kiwifruit -- this is far more important than kiwifruit -- you can find another crop to grow to make some money but you can't get another kauri forest in five minutes," he said.
The Government last year injected $4.7 million into a five year programme to help save the kauri but Mr King said very little of this was going to hard research or workers on the ground.
"Their focus has been on meetings, meetings. That's ridiculous, you shouldn't have things that are nationally significant like that dying because their focus is in the wrong place."
The average kauri tree is between 600 and 1000 years old, the oldest being the grand Tane Mahuta in the Waipoua Forest, which is about 2400 years old.
"Kauri are the largest rainforest tress on earth and they are to New Zealand what the pyramids are to Egypt and Stonehenge and cathedrals are to England," Mr King said.
"They're worth more than tourism, it's about our identity. This is something that is far more important than a few kiwifruit vines."
NZPA