In the 1940s it became known that the State Forest Service was cutting kauri at Waipoua. In 1947 the Whangarei Progressive Society, in association with the Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society, the Waipoua Preservation Society, and other organisations secured more than 43,000 signatures on a petition asking for the 'declaration of the Waipoua State Forest as a national park under a board of trust, and that all milling and other state forest activities should cease'. The petition consisted of thirteen volumes of signatures, which was presented by the MP for Marsden, AJ Murdoch in a wheelbarrow to parliament on 25 September 1947. Its hope was that at Waipoua should be set aside for all time, inviolate from interference by man. Other petitions followed, and on 2 July 1952 an area of over was proclaimed a forest sanctuary.