kahikatea forest type. Even after the burning of many forests by early Māori, there still remained large remnant forests which European settlers came upon in the 18th and 19th centuries. Prospects for use as timber were accelerated by the vast numbers of straight and tall trees, but because the wood is soft and odourless, it was made into pulp, barrels and boxes–butter boxes in particular were made mostly out of kahikatea. The kahikatea's usually flat habitat, with its damp and fertile soil, was also a prime location for dairy farming. Together this led to the felling of much of the remaining forests in the North and South Islands during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Today they are confined mostly to the South Westland region of the South Island, though small remnants still exist in some places. Conservation efforts have focused on protecting and fencing kahikatea forests around the country. Riccarton Bush is one notable example of forest remnant protection. The near reserve was held in the Deans family for 70 years before it was gifted to Christchurch by them in 1914, and subsequently formally protected in the Riccarton Bush Bill. It is the only surviving kahikatea forest remnant in the entire Canterbury Plains, and contains trees up to 600 years old. Reservation of stands may not totally protect kahikatea, however, because the alluvial plains that they favour are prone to upheaval and erosion and so trees may still become damaged. Forest remnants outside of South Westland face the threat of never returning to their natural states, as a result of their small size, threats from weed species, and grazing by livestock. Despite this, the kahikatea has been classified as Least concern by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and "Not Threatened" by the New Zealand Threat Classification System, which gives it an estimated population of above 100,000. In Māori culture In Māori mythology the kahikatea is a child of Tāne, the god of forests and birds, and Hine-wao-riki. It served as an important source of wood for the making of tools, of dye, and of food from its berries. To collect the latter, Māori had to climb sometimes more than to reach them. 19th century British ethnographers Richard Taylor, Eldson Best, and William Colenso all recorded the fruit of kahikatea being eaten, and that it was given its own name: koroī. Best described berries being collected in