thumb|right|160px|Location of the Kaingaroa Forest

Kaingaroa Forest covers 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 Sabie/Graskop plantation in South Africa). 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, southeast of Rotorua. Prior to planting the area was a tussock and scrub plateau (ranging between high), formed on volcanic ash.

The New Zealand Ministry for Culture and Heritage gives a translation of "long area of land" for Kāingaroa.

The forest was first planted in the late 1920s and owned as a state asset by the New Zealand government. Experimental planting of douglas fir and radiata pine began on a block at Kaingaroa in 1901 and continued from 1906 using Waiotapu prison labour. By 1932 the pines averaged high and in diameter. Later planting was as an unemployment relief scheme. 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.

Climate

References

  • 1:50,000 map of forest village
  • Kaingaroa Forest on Google maps
  • Tephra soils

;Photos

  • 1903 Kaingaroa Plain and mud covered ridges from the 1886 Tarawera eruption
  • 1925 ploughing
  • 1961 bulldozer
  • 1963 aerial view
  • 1976 aerial view of settlement