BREAKING OUT

Ever fancied owning your own forest? Logger Brian Reader did. And his dream came true, but it wasn’t a walk in the woods, as he details in his article entitled A Forest Owner’s Tale.

THE DEPARTMENT OF CONSERVATION'S HEAD OF THE WINDblown salvaging programme, Tim Shaw, reports that from April 2014 to October 2017, the cyclone-hit timber recovery operation had harvested 8,000m3 of round wood.

The bulk of the timber comprises 6,600m3 of Rimu, with 1900m3 of Red Beech.

Since autumn 2017, sapwood issues on logs has rendered much of the resource on the ground unmerchantable, due to fungal decay and insect damage. The loss of quality extends through some of the colour grades on most of the smaller Rimu logs. Large logs with high heart content were still worth extracting.

There was also about 200m3 of Kahikatea, Silver Beech, Matai and Totara, but of insufficient quality to be merchantable.

At the height of the operation eight crews had work underway across numerous sites at any one time. By the beginning of last year, this had been reduced to just four, then to two crews by mid-year at two sites in the Hari Hari area. Timber recovery work had taken place at 32 sites, from Karamea in the north and Whataroa in the south.

The few remaining operations have been targeting large Rimu stems, generally over 89cm in diameter. Logs of this size are only present in good numbers in a few places that are accessible and practical to harvest. They need to be broken down in the forest to achieve safe helicopter lift limits, while a small portable mill was used to cut some logs into lumber. Southern Helilift's Darren Davidson is still extracting logs but is limited by the Huey's 1.4-tonne lifting limit.

NZL