'Furious' Carter steps into rimu logging fray

Furious Conservation Minister Chris Carter says his department will prosecute if a native log miller has taken "one square metre" over his allowable annual cut at the pristine Taunoka Forest near Wanganui.

In a unique case for New Zealand, Chris Bergman has historic cutting rights to the trees - including rimu up to 1000 years old - growing on 200ha of conservation land in the upper Whanganui River Valley.

The businessman bought the rights for $60,000 six months ago and started felling last week, causing a public outcry. A legal anomaly means DoC is powerless to stop him.

Under the Wanganui District Council plan, however, Mr Bergman is restricted to half a hectare of indigenous logging a year until 2010. DoC staff estimate he has already harvested four years' quota instead of one year's.

"It's an absolute outrage," Mr Carter said yesterday on his return from a local government symposium in Fiji.

If the Wanganui council did not act, he had instructed his department to take the case to the Environment Court.

The minister has, in turn, come under fire from mayor Michael Laws.

The council would "apply the law" with regard to the logging, Mr Laws said yesterday. "But we will be sending the bill to the Department of Conservation."

On Monday, Mr Laws and council officers met Mr Bergman and agreed to an independent assessment to determine if the district plan had been infringed.

"If he is in contravention [of the 0.5ha annual cut] then council has a number of options, from taking legal action through to advising Mr Bergman that he's just chopped his 2005, 2006 and 2007 allocations as well," the mayor said.

"We're piggy in the middle. This is essentially a scrap between DoC and one of its tenants. And it's costing our ratepayers good money doing something DoC could have solved any year from 1987."

Mr Laws said the department could have applied at any time to successive ministers to change the law or compulsorily acquire the logging rights, but "chose not to".

He could not understand why Mr Carter simply did not introduce legislation "in the traditional end-of-year parliamentary omnibus bill, to either compulsorily acquire Mr Bergman's logging rights or amend the statutory loophole."

Mr Carter said DoC had offered Mr Bergman $450,000 for the cutting rights to the trees, which the previous owner had "sat on" for 24 years.

"That was a pretty good profit for no work at all on something he had paid 60 grand for a few months ago, but he [Mr Bergman] refused."

The value-added logs would be worth about $12 million, Mr Carter said: "For quite a minimum outlay, he is making a bonanza of it."

The forest in dispute was transferred to the old Lands and Survey Department in 1980 by a local landowner trying to make amends for illegally logging conservation land, the minister said.

When DoC came into being in 1987, it inherited the block which still had private cutting rights under the earlier agreement. Until now, no one had exercised them.

By law, DoC could not sell conservation land or cutting rights. It could "do swaps" but the disputed trees were growing on land the department already owned.

Under the anomaly, the Taunoka block was exempt from the Forestry Amendment Act and neither a sustainable logging permit nor resource consents was required.

Mr Bergman has voluntarily stopped logging in the meantime.