Kaingaroa Forest
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Kaingaroa Forest covers Template:Convert of the Bay of Plenty Region of New Zealand, and is the largest forest plantation in New Zealand, and the second largest in the Southern Hemisphere (after the Template:Convert Sabie/Graskop plantation in South Africa).<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> The forest stretches from Lake Taupō in the south to Kawerau to the north and has roughly 20 million trees. The headquarters of the forest are at the small settlement of Kaingaroa, Bay of Plenty, Template:Convert southeast of Rotorua.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Prior to planting the area was a tussock and scrub plateau (ranging between Template:Convert high), formed on volcanic ash.<ref name=":0">Template:Cite news</ref>
The New Zealand Ministry for Culture and Heritage gives a translation of "long area of land" for Kāingaroa.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
The forest was first planted in the late 1920s<ref>"New Zealand forestry and the forest code of practice"</ref><ref>"The first planting boom, 1925–1935"</ref> and owned as a state asset by the New Zealand government. Experimental planting of douglas fir and radiata pine began on a Template:Convert block at Kaingaroa in 1901 and continued from 1906 using Waiotapu prison labour.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> By 1932 the pines averaged Template:Convert high and Template:Convert in diameter. Later planting was as an unemployment relief scheme.<ref name=":0" /> While under government control it was known as the Kaingaroa State Forest.
In the 1980s the government sought to sell the forests to private interests. Several Māori iwi went to Court to prevent the sale, arguing that they were the traditional owners of the land, that the land had been wrongfully taken from them, and that the government should retain the land until a settlement of the claims had been reached.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref name="NZ_Herald_10534220">Template:Cite news</ref> It has taken 20 years to reach settlement of those claims and to see the forest lands returned to their traditional owners. On 1 July 2009, it passed to a group of tribes that were the traditional land owners in partial settlement of their claims that the Crown breached the Treaty of Waitangi. The forests themselves (the trees) continue to be owned by a private company (Kaingaroa Timberlands Ltd), which holds a forestry licence over the land.
New Zealand State Highway 38, from Wai-O-Tapu to Murupara crosses the forest.
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- Photos