66 THE PUHIPUHI KAURI FOREST. 
Present-day Values: Puhipuhi Timber. 
Royalty-valwe: 510 million sup. ft. at 10s. per 
100 sup. ft. te a ae 
Sawn timber average net value: 510 milbon yp 
sup. ft. at £1 5s. per 100 sup. ft. ... 6,375,000 
£ 
2,550,000 
These two figures represent, in round numbers—two millions and a 
half lost to the Public Treasury, and an industrial loss of some six 
millions and a third production in New Zealand; and what is more, 
production of a raw material—timber. 
Against this loss there is nothing to set except the grazing on the 
burnt forest land and the proportion of timber worked up during and 
after the burning of the forest—viz., 60 million sup. ft.—together with 
the saving (a drop in the ocean) of some few thousands a year in the 
local cost of a Forest Department to look after the timber and protect 
the forest from fire. The Land Commissioner’s forest staff at this time 
included well-chosen and able men; but then, as how, it was a mere 
skeleton Forest Department consisting of untrained men, without skilled 
direction—as powerless in the field as would have been five firemen 
stationed at Palmerston North to protect the City of Wellington against 
fires ! 
An efficient local forest staff for the whole Puhipuhi State Forest, 
including both the Kauri area and the mixed Totara and other forest, 
would have cost some £2,000 or £6,000 a year, according to the 
measure of intensive working resolved upon. This, as mentioned above, 
would have sufficed to have thinned out, regenerated, and put an economic 
timber increment on to the younger trees left, Government doing its own 
logging, sawmilling, and exporting, as the timber had so low a local 
value. The profit of this moderate exploitation would have been com- 
pared at intervals with the timber increment gained and improvement 
in the condition of the forest, as determined by competent foresters. 
Or the forest might simply have been closed down, as the Waipoua Forest 
has been; but this would have been at the cost of loss of revenue and 
loss of forest-improvement. 
Whichever of these plans were adopted, there would, of course, have 
been full intensive working as soon as the railway arrived on the spot, 
with the profits and costs of working set forth approximately at p. 95, 
“ Balance-sheet of a Normal Kauri Forest.’? The working-costs then 
would have been about £20,000 a year—viz., 5,667 acres at an average 
cost of £2 per acre (employment in the normal forest), and 11,334 acres 
at about 15s. &d. per acre during the transition period. The value 
now being obtained for the land under dairying—a poor business com- 
pared to the scientifically worked Kauri forest—is considered below. 
So much for the value of Puhipuhi timber. 
Lost Furure Timpsr CROPS OF THE Punipunr Foresr. 
Serious, however. as was the loss in the burning and wasteful 
working of the Puhipuhi Forest, this was eclipsed industrially in the 
permanent loss to New Zealand of so rich an inheritance in this fine 
forest estate. The loss of the virgin-forest timber may have represented 
230 years’ forest growth; but behind that lay the economically greater 
loss in the capital value of the forest as a national asset, lost to the 
country for all time. 
