Whirinaki Forest

Whirinaki Forest in the central North Island is a place of crystal-clear water, blue ducks and soaring forests of ancient podocarps and beech. The forest park offers over 100 kilometres of tramping tracks that range from broad, almost flat trails through towering podocarp forest to rugged climbs over remote ranges clad in beech forest and routes that follow streams and rivers through beautiful valleys.

Roughly 70 kilometres southeast of Rotorua, the Whirinaki State Forest Park lies between the wilderness of Te Urewera National Park and the artificial, serried ranks of Monterey pine trees in the Kaingaroa forest. It ranges from giant podocarps in the river flats (stands of totara, kahikatea, miro, matai and rimu) to moss-covered beech forest in the higher and more rugged areas. In the 1970s, an industrious and thriving timber industry was busily logging its way through the stands of podocarps when protests by conservationists halted the clear-felling. In 1984 it became a state forest park and conservation area.

Of course, this killed the small towns in the area. Minginui (in the Whirinaki River Valley) and to a lesser extent Murupara (20 kilometres back towards Rotorua) were devastated by the decision. Minginui once had huge sawmills, jobs, shops and services. Now it is a bleak place with few jobs and not much of a future. Some people in the area, such as the owners of Whirinaki Forest Lodge in Te Whaiti, do make a living out of tourism, but this does not compare to the employment opportunities offered by forestry. However, the kind of logging that had been going on was unsustainable in the long run. The wholesale felling of trees that take three or four hundred years to grow is inevitably a boom and bust industry and characteristic of much of our colonial exploitation of New Zealand’s resources.

Actually, the forest has probably been destroyed several times before, but by volcanic activity, and it’s always had millenia to recover in. Layers of hot pumice and ash from cataclysmic eruptions in the Okataina area blanketed the area on several occasions between about 260,000 and 40,000 years ago. Later, the awesome eruption at Taupo about 2,000 years ago left charred logs that are still clearly visible in pumice deposits (pictured). The layers of pumice mean that streams and the Whirinaki river are filtered clean and sparkling clear. Trout are found in the lower reaches of the river, below the 8 metre waterfall on its course, and blue ducks, or whio, can be seen effortlessly navigating the current.