A Northland environmental group is taking three government departments to court over what it says are failures to enforce the law on swamp kauri exports.
The Forest Act 1949 prohibits the export of swamp kauri unless it has been made into a "finished product" - but it seems no one can agree on what a finished product is. The Northland Environmental Protection Society (NEPS) is challenging decisions by the Ministry of Primary Industries (MPI) and Customs to allow 25 shipments of swamp kauri out of the country over the past five years.
Eight of those shipments were of table tops which NEPS claims were lightly finished slabs intended for further processing overseas. Other shipments were of carvings, temple poles, "timber shorts" and stump logs. Stumps may be exported but not logs. The act does not define a stump log.
NEPS chairwoman Fiona Furrell said the group wanted to challenge the way MPI was interpreting the Forests Act, and in particular how it defined a finished product.
Earlier this month Auditor-General Lyn Provost rejected NEPS' call for an inquiry into the swamp kauri trade - but backed the group's claims that the milling statements system, which is supposed to make sure logs are not extracted from protected wetlands, was open to abuse because there were minimal checks or inspections.