Strain adds to $435m logjam

Rising tensions in the Urewera over terrorism-related arrests have forced a multinational consortium to practically abandon its attempts to log a huge and lucrative block of forestry land.

"We have delayed the harvest indefinitely. Clearly there are a lot of people unhappy around the Whakatane area about what the police did, and we just don't want to be caught up in that," Matariki Forests director Paul Nicholls said.

Tuhoe activists have since September 2006 blockaded two roads that provide the only access to a $435 million block of forestry land bought last year by Matariki Forests. Tuhoe say the forestry land is theirs, and was never legally bought by the Crown in 1896.

Nicholls said the company had spent a year unsuccessfully negotiating with the Omuriwaka hapu over access to the 86,000ha Tahora Block. The company is owned by a consortium of local and foreign companies, including the Florida-based logging giant Rayonier.

Matariki had planned to try to resume logging this month, before the controversial series of police arrests and searches in the Ruatoki Valley of the Ureweras took place.

Nicholls said as far as he was aware neither Matariki Forests, nor the local offices of Rayonier, were a particular target for any alleged illegal activity by Tuhoe.

"One of the reasons we've delayed going back in there is we do have concerns about the safety of the contractor and both his men and equipment. We have no direct knowledge of anything to do with firearms or anything like that, but given the current situation in the area it is of major concern to us," he said.

John Hillman-Rua, the "justice spokesman" for the Waimananuku Iwi Authority, welcomed the news.

He said the company did not have legal title to the land. If the company tried to get through the roadblocks, local people would have blocked them with their "security people".

"We can relax a bit now. Tensions have been a bit high," he said.

The blockades by the Omuriwaka hapu have sporadically interrupted road access to two popular DoC camping grounds in Te Urewera National Park, the Waimana Valley Eight Acre campaign area or Ogilvies Camping Area. DoC's Opotiki office said for the past two months, campers had been let through the blockade after signing a visitor's book.

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