New Zealand - Timber Industry - Kauri forest, main trunk line, North Island - 1900-1910 - William Archer Price Photo Kauri - Kauri forests once covered 1.2 million ha from the Far North of Northland to Te Kauri, near Kawhia and were common when the first people arrived around 1,000 years ago. - Maori used kauri timber for boat building, carving and building houses. The gum was used as a fire starter and for chewing (after it had been soaked in water and mixed with the milk of the puha plant). - The arrival of European settlers in the 1700s to 1800s saw the decimation of these magnificent forests. - Sailors quickly realised the trunks of young kauri were ideal for ships' masts and spars, and the settlers who followed felled the mature trees to yielded huge quantities of sawn timber of unsurpassed quality for building. (Reference: read more at https://www.doc.govt.nz/nature/native-plants/kauri/) The value of all forestry exports (logs, chips, sawn timber, panels and paper products) - $NZ 3.62 billion for the year ended 31 March 2006 - $NZ 5 billion in 2018 - Australia accounts for just over 25% of export value, mostly paper products, followed by Japan, South Korea, China and the United States. - In 2018, wood products were New Zealand's third-biggest export - Forestry accounted for approximately 3% of national GDP - Directly employing 20,000 people (Reference: Wikipedia) --------------------- Image source: Kauri forest, main trunk line, North Island. Price, William Archer, 1866-1948 :Collection of post card negatives. Ref: 1/2-001258-G. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. natlib.govt.nz/records/22830444 https://www.flickr.com/photos/nationallibrarynz_commons/21020773884/