Deforestation in New Zealand

Deforestation in New Zealand has been a contentious environmental issue in the past, but now native forests, colloquially called "the bush", now have legal protection, and are not allowed to be tampered with by humans.

Since New Zealand was the last major landmass to be settled by humans, anthropological changes are easier to study than in countries with a longer human history. A picture of the vegetation cover has been built up through the use of archeological and fossil remains, especially pollen grains from old forests. Some of the most ancient intact forests in the world are found in New Zealand, examples being on Stewart Island and Ulva Island.

Prior to Māori arrival, New Zealand was almost entirely forested, besides high alpine regions and those areas affected by volcanic activity. Māori began settling the country about 1000 years ago and by 1840, when Europeans were a small part of the total population, the forest cover is said to have been significantly reduced from 85% down to 53%.

When the first Europeans arrived, in 1772, there was still thick, dense forest cover. Early explorers such as Cook and Banks described the land as "immense woods, lofty trees and the finest timber" Mainly timber was used for repairs to sailing ships until the 19th Century. With the colony of New South Wales rapidly expanding, the need for timber from New Zealand began to rise. Timber exports, mainly kauri, became a major industry for New Zealand. There are records from the 1840s, stating that 50 to 100 ships could be tied to shore in Kaipara Harbour and be filled with lumber from giant floating booms that can hold 10,000 logs at a time. Besides trees as a form of lumber, many pioneers found the kauri trees valuable for the gum it produced to make varnish and linoleum mainly in the north island near Auckland. The colonist used unconventional methods to gather this gum from living trees. Stripping these trees and the ground around them resulted in the destruction of the land, rendering it unusable for agriculture (Wynn pg. 108). Without the trees to hold the soil and debris to the land, water flowed freely causing frequent flooding, which regularly occurred. As most of New Zealand was covered with thick bush, the slash and burn technique was used often to prepare land wanted for farming in forested areas. This practice was not carried out very responsibly due to the complexity of controlling a fire and in turn unintentionally resulted in large areas of land catching fire Thousands of acres were accidentally burned and destroyed.

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