Most of it's on sandy soils, Mr Moore said, either coastal dunes or the arc of sandy hill country inland across the region.
Ownership is varied. Ernslaw 1 and Rayonier are big owners, and Wanganui District Council is one of many small ones. There are also lots of syndicates and individual owners who are not committed to supply any particular user.
Log prices were holding steady, driven by strong demand from China, rather than their usual fluctuation.
But the prices didn't make for a profit bonanza because energy prices were increasing, which raised the cost of harvesting.
"Net returns are up, but it's not a boom," Mr Moore said.
Planting, pruning, thinning, harvesting and marketing are usually done by contractors.
The two big local ones are Feilding-based Forest Owner Marketing Services (FOMS) and Marton-based John Turkington Ltd. There are at least 30 smaller logging contractors in the area. They could have as few as five staff but needed three different machines which cost hundreds of thousands, even secondhand.
McCarthy's Transport does most of the log carting, with 49 trucks in the region. FOMS now also has four trucks and logs are also transported to ports by rail.
The wood could be processed here, but Mr Moore said there wasn't enough volume or continuity of supply for a large timber mill. The large number of private owners could also create a problem with supply.
But there was a great opportunity for smaller processing operations, processing timber used to make furniture for example.
Mr Moore said most of the steepest hill country that is logged gets replanted, because it's not suitable for any other uses. But he agrees with Bulls-based forester Denis Hocking that not enough replanting is happening.
Some syndicate members were not replanting, because they were too old to benefit from another rotation. Some smaller blocks were not being replanted because of access problems.
In places land had been cleared which should not have been cleared - and that would cause future problems. There was also still "a reasonably strong anti-forestry stance" by agriculturalists, some of whom had probably heard bad things about forestry in "pub talk".
He was noticing more people planting trees other than pines - species like Tasmanian blackwood, macrocarpa, eucalypts and redwoods.
"The days of blanketing the land with pines are starting to disappear."
He said changing toward a more treed landscape would take time, but it would happen.
"It's rewarding to see a lot more educated farmers coming through, with a greater appreciation."