The pureora project 1940–78

Abstract

In the late 1930s, NZFS began to consider long-term management plans for the remaining native forests. The result as applied to the west Taupo forests, the Pureora Working Circle, was delayed by war but eventually published in 1952. It was designed to control the allocation of native timber blocks to sawmill companies, and invest in a staged transition to plantation forests of exotic species. This chapter describes the plan, the building and operation of the sawmills, and the allocation of cutting rights under contract to NZFS. It describes how the logging operations were conducted in the bush, from cruising (surveying and estimating the volume of standing timber), through felling the trees, hauling the logs out of the bush with bulldozers and logging arches, and loading the trucks for transport to the mills, to how the mills cut the timber. It summarises the histories, the sawing machinery and the annual production of the local mills up to 1978.