KEY POINTS:
Matariki Forests has suspended logging a forest in the Bay of Plenty, blaming tensions in the aftermath of police raids this month.
The company is confident of its right to log the 1300ha Matahi Block because its research has uncovered a document made of calfskin dating back to
the 1890s it says supports its ownership claim.
Matariki Forests was in dispute with the Omuriwaka hapu over its right to log the Matahi Block before the police searches for weapons associated with alleged military training camps in the Bay of Plenty increased tension in the region.
Matariki Forests stopped logging the Matahi Block last year when Maori blockaded access and vandalised equipment. In July the company called police in to remove a portable sawmill in the block. The mill, vehicles and two buses were removed.
Matariki Forests' investors include United States forestry giant Rayonier, as well as Deutsche Bank and AMP. It bought 95,000ha of forests from Carter Holt Harvey for $435 million and forests owned by Rayonier were also put in the venture. The disputed Matahi Block is worth about $15 million.
Matariki Forests director Paul Nicholls said none of his staff had been threatened by weapons but the company was preparing to go back in to log the block when the police raids occurred and had consequently suspended that decision.
He said Omuriwaka were the only hapu to dispute the company's right to log.
The Matahi Block is part of the Tahora Block purchased by the Crown in 1896. It was used for soldier settlement after World War I. Later owners included John Spencer, the toilet paper empire owner, and Carter Holt.
Nicholls said the company had researched the title, though John Hillman-Rua, spokesman for the Waimananuku Iwi Authority, told a Sunday newspaper that the company's title was disputed.
The company stopped logging in 2006 when the title was first disputed.
"We got a land information specialists to research the title and he found the original document in the National Archive. It was written on calfskin and it is the equivalent of 54 A3 pages of signatures," he said.
The signatures were gathered from 1893 to 1896 and the document was written in both Maori and English. The document had a map of a block 213,000 acres in size sold for two shillings and sixpence an acre.
Maori oral history contradicts the document. The company's position is that the Waitangi Tribunal should be the mechanism for resolving the matter.
"Blocking us from harvesting the forest is not going to get us anywhere," Nicholls said.
He said the company had also been accused of dishonouring tapu burial sites and other sites but it did not believe it had done this.
It had discovered that Carter Holt had encountered problems logging the block previously.
Forestry industry executives have said that at one point the Ureweras were to become a major plantation forestry region of similar size to the central North Island.
But the plan never went ahead and Carter Holt bought new land in Northland instead.
Blocks in the Ureweras are left from that time.
Matariki Forests wants to replant the forests it harvests in the area.
- NZPA
