As in many other countries, indigenous forests on private land in New Zealand have long been vulnerable to commercial logging and clearance for agriculture and exotic forestry. The 1990s are a potential watershed in achieving sustainable management of this resource. The Government has recently adopted an indigenous forest policy (IFP) with this objective in mind and enacted appropriate legislation [the Forests Amendment Act 1993 (FAA)] as the principal means to implement the IFP.
The objective of this paper is to analyse the potential of this significant recent environment policy initiative as a means for sustainable management of privately owned indigenous forests from two complementary perspectives:
β’ an analysis of the new regime for sustainable management of indigenous forests as prescribed in the legislation. β’ based on this, a case study of the views of Western Southland forest owners on the ability of the new regime to achieve its objectives. Although the Western Southland landscape has been substantially modified by agriculture and logging, it still retains a significant proportion of indigenous forest cover, with silver beech (Nothofagus menziesii) as the predominant species. Beeches are considered the most suited of New Zealand's indigenous forest species to manage for timber production using the methods of sustainable yield management.