The Great Dieback

A post about the problem of kauri dieback disease in New Zealand, its impact, and what’s being done about it. Ancient forests are at risk.

The disease is known as ‘eucalytus dieback’ in Australia and ‘kauri dieback’ in New Zealand, on the basis of the trees most commonly affected in each country.

A little while back I was visiting Cape Brett, or Rākaumangamanga, which I’ve got another post about here.

If you liken the North Island of New Zealand to a stingray with a long tail, the tail of the stingray is the Northland peninsula, which extends about 330 kilometres north of Auckland.

Cape Brett’s on the east coast of the peninsula. Around the same time, I decided to visit the Waipoua Forest on the west coast, where there are a lot of big kauri trees. The Waipoua Forest is inside a red circle on the map above. A map that also shows the location of Cape Brett / Rākaumangamanga and, to the south near Auckland, the Waitākere Ranges. I’ll be talking about those a little further along.

The west coast of the peninsula is a bit poorer than the east coast. It was good to see the things that were being done to overcome local underdevelopment and unemployment. Young people were being trained as baristas to serve the local tourism industry.

A large part of the tourism industry on Northland’s west coast depends on the primeval kauri forests.

Certain giant specimens of the species are especially popular with tourists. Trees like…

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