Kauri withering in the Waipoua forest a "tragedy" – scientist

Urgent action is needed to save the kauri in the Waipoua Forest in Northland and some iconic trees – including Tāne Mahuta – could be infected by withering a year from now, warn scientists

The disease – phytopthera agathadicida – is close to some of the largest kauris in the region and is only 200 m from the Four Sisters.

Jack Craw, a former chief of biosafety for the Auckland Council, said it was "a tragedy".

He set up the original kauri dieback survey in 2010 and was now closely monitoring the Waipoua Forest

] Morning Report all unexplored kauri areas were to be closed until That they are brought up to standard, including the improvement of the tracks.

He said that he was horrified to see that wild pigs still had the race of the forest. they can spread the disease wherever they go by eating the roots of infected trees or lizards and worms in the soil.

"It goes through the undigested pig, so a pig can carry the seeds two kilometers a day." [19659006] He said in Auckland, poachers were paid to kill the wild pig Mr. Craw said that Trounson Kauri Park was a "cemetery", with at least half of the trees dead, while Waipoua, there were 40 or 50 trees dead more than six months ago

The Department of Conservation is modernizing the trails and walks for the 200,000 people who visit Tāne Mahuta every year, including state-of-the-art shoe cleaning machines on the trail

But scientist Nick Waipara said that whenever he visited Waipoua, the forest looked worse

"We saw the big trees of the Waipoua Basin succumb to the disease. drive along the road and you can see it, you do not need to look beyond the road.

But Dr. Waipara and other scientists still have not the data to tell how fast Kauri dieback is spreading in Northland.] The kind of aerial surveys that Jack Craw ordered eight years ago in the Council-owned Waitákere Forests did not start in north than in 2014.

The Kau National Program MPI's Dieback laughed did an aerial sweep of the region last summer. and found 200 new cases of suspected diseases

Soil monitoring, or the ground check needed to confirm the disease has still not been done.

Dr. Amanda Black, of the Bioprotection Research Center of the University of Lincoln, stated that the program "We had weak governance around the program, people involved in the management of the program did not know how doing research, not knowing what to look for, and not knowing how to handle it, and we had some failures in key scientific areas that led to the disappearance of trees in this forest. "

She said that Waipoua urgently needed a crisis management plan if large trees were to be saved DOC cleaning station at the entrance to a track in the Waipoua Forest “/>

Cleaning Station of DOC at the entrance of a track in the Waipoua Forest
Photo: RNZ / Lois Williams