The exploitation of populations: The exploitation of the indigenous forests

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A thousand or so years ago the indigenous forests covered most of the land surface of New Zealand, the main unforested areas being those where climates were too extreme to allow forest to develop, or where volcanic eruptions, floods, or earthquakes had created seral conditions (Holloway 1954).
The Moa Hunters are believed to have been responsible for removing, or hastening the removal of large areas of climatically unstable forest from the more arid eastern plains and hills of both islands and may also have burnt forest in many other localities, probably retarding the regeneration of forests over the volcanic plateau of the central districts of the North Island (Holloway 1954 ).