By David Norton*
During Cyclones Hale and Gabrielle the poor management of exotic plantations – primarily pine – has again led to extensive damage in Tairāwhiti. Critical public infrastructure destroyed; highly productive agricultural and horticultural land washed away or buried; houses, fences and sheds knocked over; people’s lives and dreams upended; people dead.
The impacts on natural ecosystems are still unknown, but there will have been extensive damage in terrestrial, freshwater and marine environments. Similar damage occurred during storms in June 2018 and July 2020.
While heavy rainfall and flooded rivers are a major factor, it is sediment and slash from plantation harvesting that has been the cause of most of the damage.
Slash is the woody material (including large logs) left after clear-fell harvesting of commercial forests.
Landslides in harvested sites pick up the material and carry it downstream, causing significant damage. All the evidence from Cyclone Gabrielle shows that much of the damage was caused by radiata pine slash.
The legacy of poor land management
Sediment and slash from exotic tree harvesting sites were established as major factors in the damage that occurred during the June 2018 Tolaga Bay storm in recent court cases taken by Gisborne District Council.
Five plantation companies were found guilty and fined for breaching resource consent conditions relating to their management practices.
Multiple groups have called for an inquiry into the way plantation harvest sites are being managed in Tairāwhiti and elsewhere.
But given the severity and ongoing nature of these impacts, is it not time we move beyond focusing on management practices and address the broader underlying issues that have triggered this situation?
These ultimate causes are complex but primarily revolve around historic poor land management decision-making and human-induced climate change.
‘East Coast disaster’: Environmental group calls for inquiry into forestry practices https://t.co/pjTVIiy0Cf pic.twitter.com/MQYkVZCMAY
— nzherald (@nzherald) January 13, 2023
Among the key drivers of the current problems in Tairāwhiti are the large areas of exotic tree plantations that were established with government support after the devastation of Cyclone Bola.
But this devastation also reflects earlier poor land management decisions to clear native forest off steep, erodible hill country in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which was also encouraged by the government of the day.
Looming climate change
The other underlying driver of the disaster is human-induced climate change. Atmospheric CO2 levels are now 150% above pre-industrial levels and climates are changing rapidly with new and unprecedented events becoming the norm.
While increasing global temperatures are the most obvious feature of human-induced climate change, it is the increasing frequency and intensity of extreme weather events that are having the biggest impacts on people and the environment.
It is essential that we hold the forestry sector accountable in Tairāwhiti and elsewhere. But we also need to urgently address the underlying causes because no matter how strict harvesting rules are, storm events are going to occur with increasing frequency and intensity.
Time for urgent action
With more than 40 years experience researching forest ecology and sustainable land management in Aotearoa, I believe there are four key areas where we need to urgently act to address these issues.
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As a country we need to rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions and rapidly increase the draw-down of CO2 out of the atmosphere. These are national issues and not confined to Tairāwhiti but as a nation we seem to be sleepwalking in our response to the climate emergency.
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We need a comprehensive catchment-by-catchment assessment across all of Tairāwhiti (and likely other areas of Aotearoa) to identify those plantations that are located in the wrong place in terms of potential harvesting impacts. There should be no further harvesting in Tairāwhiti plantations until this exercise has been completed. We also need to identify those areas that currently lack plantations but should never be planted in exotic tree crops (for any purpose).
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The government then needs to buy out the current owners of these plantations and embark on a programme of careful conversion to native forest. This will come at a cost, but it needs to be done. We already have models for this in Tairāwhiti where the Gisborne District Council has started converting pine forests in its water supply catchment to native forests.
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Finally, we need to establish substantially more native forests throughout all Tairāwhiti, and Aotearoa more generally, to help build resilience in our landscapes.
The consequences of short-term thinking
For too long we have been fixated in Aotearoa with maximising short-term returns from exotic tree crops without thinking about long-term consequences. The legacies of this fixation are now really starting to impact us as the climate emergency exposes the risks that poorly sited and managed exotic tree crops pose.
And we are now making the same mistakes with exotic carbon tree crops, again leaving unacceptable legacies for future generations to deal with because of a focus on short-term financial gains.
Exotic tree plantations have dominated forest policy in Aotearoa and we urgently need to shift this to a focus on diverse native forests.
Our native rainforests provide so many benefits that exotic tree crops can never provide. They are critical for the conservation of our native biodiversity, providing habitat for a myriad of plant, animal, fungal and microbial species. They also regulate local climates, enhance water quality and reduce erosion. This helps sustain healthy freshwater and marine environments.
Native replanting initiatives championed by charities like Pure Advantage need to be the primary focus of forest policy in Aotearoa now and in the future.
*David Norton, Emeritus professor, University of Canterbury. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article..
76 Comments
Good article. There are any number of organizations now involved in planting natives and this will hopefully now expand hugely. My wife and I decided years ago to push 5% of our income into native tree planting - we found the most cost effective way to do this was to funnel it through our local Forest and Bird branch (they have access to really good quality natives bought cheaply via Council/private nurseries and planting is done by volunteers so you can get a huge bang for your buck - plus if your knees are up to it you get the fun of planting too). In addition planting is done on places with QE2 covenants and the like so you know some pr+ck isn't going to come along and undo all the good work. It's easy to feel powerless in the face of climate change (and the vile disinformation from the deniers), but we thought bugger it, time to make our stand. We are some way above 10,000 natives now paid for/planted, and that makes us smile.
IT Guy - Uninformed stupidity, do you think bare land, often steep will not suffer erosion in heavy rain, the mud may not wash away bridges but still invades homes. The solution is not a single item - Natives may be good but their carbon sequestration is low so NZ emissions go up and we buy credits internationally, the harvest period for natives is twice that of Pines and trimmed natives and harvested ones still produce slash so by not solving the slash problem you simply defer the problem. There was an answer to slash - pile it and burn but the idiotic greenies stopped that. There are solutions within known technology and the ETS albeit requiring changes to ensure a smooth economic transition read the MPI site for more details.
Bollocks.
Too much personal interest and assumption, Rumpole.
Regarding sequestration, the best thing is to stop extracting carbon from underground, burning it into the above-ground arena - where humans evolved with it absent. Trying to accommodate MORE in withing a bounded system, is the anomaly. (Note you don't consider this!).
Who said anything about harvest? This is regeneration, not profit/extraction. We have overshot, pursuing the latter - obvious to all except those who need not to know.
Thee problem with burning 'slash' (which is a misnomer; it's what we choose to not value enough) is that the nutrient runs away. One or two more (slowing) rotations and you're at the end-game. Forest ecologies are complex but not very deep.
And it's not the Greenies who profit from the system, or who started it. Blame is better identified in the article.
I note, a lot lately, that maturity is independent of age...
Slash and Stumps buried release their stored carbon over 10 years according to MPI tables so burning simply accelerates the process and removes the slash into rivers etc. As a forestry owner I understand the practicalities trees also die presenting the same issues -suggest you come up with pragmatic, economic solution.
It is a wicked problem known since we arrived on these shores. Blaming one tree species is simplistic nonsense.
Check out the native planting on the east coast beach in 1948. We didn't even have the runaway global warming gravy train then.
https://teara.govt.nz/en/video/33279/1948-flood
I am a huge fan of native reveg, but let's be honest here, the damage is not caused by the type of tree, it's caused by the harvesting practices. NZ needs to have an ongoing source of renewable construction materials and they have to come from somewhere. This need will increase over time and probably include production of wood ethanol and pellets. Radiata is poor quality timber and only useful when pumped with chemicals, but there are many better timber species out there that shouldn't be precluded from future planting on appropriate sites and with appropriate harvest techniques ie selective logging.
I've Always had a thing for red beech since I pulled a piece out of the motu river and made a coffee table. Forest research did a heap of work back in the day and it's quite possible to produce but pinus radiata fits way better with our quantity not quality, short term, sell as a commodity thinking we apply to most of our industry.
A company I was with probably processed more red beech than anyone from the West Coast under sustainable management. All my house furniture, tables, chairs, floors are red beech. Great timber BUT completely uneconomic to grow and process. I lost enough money to know that. We tried everything in everyday and to hard. It's an amazing timber saying that.
True, but even older houses need maintaining, furniture etc. We all know in reality the population of NZ will be nearer 100 million, than 2 million by 2100. How do I know this? There are about 10 people in NZ that recognise overshoot as a problem and 5 million with media support that don't. As the tropics empty out, there'll be boats arriving every day.
Your article reflects what has been known for decades. We don't need an enquiry, we need to get on with it.
The purpose of the enquiry is political - to shelter the weak kneed politicians (including Councillors) from making the decisions that responsible leaders should make. If these folk can't make the hard calls they should get out of politics now.
Our biodiversity is collapsing, our forests and hill country is collapsing, we consume too much, drive too much and waste too much.
The land of the long white fog brain.
A Country Calendar Episode features some people taking out the Manuka and putting in exotic trees for the reason being 'Cabon Credits'. Our own NZ trees have not been measured for the c02 that they take in... so for the carbon credits system our native forest need to be added too. Money talks and people won't change unless the cost/benefit ratio is working for them.
The seedlings are cheap - I easily gathered about 60 Kauri cones from a local forest last week after the storm, while casually strolling about - thats about 5000 seeds right there, 90% of which will germinate. And I have literally hundreds growing from previous years in pots. Only cost was the soil and the pot, about 60cents/piece. All pine forests should be replaced with Kauri, Totara, and other native species that have evolved to withstand the wet of the subtropical /temperate climate. The forest I gathered the Kauri cones from had no slips at all, despite being on very steep, crumbly, creeky, clay ground in Warkworth, just huge immovable Kauris.
Not so much 'the industry', but 'society'. We have lived too extractively, and have to pay it back. By the time we sort that properly, there will be no ' economy' as we have recently known it. So the societal structures of the future will be different.
As to seedlings; walk into a piece of (local wherever you are) remnant forest. Take home a handful of humus, prick 'em out. Raise them, put them in. I'm not sure there's a ' business model' for what we need to do - we just need to do it.
Check out MPI carbon look up tables to see the different growth and sequestration rates including natives, you will then see the attraction of PInes. The issue is not with tree species it Harvesting methods but I agree increased Natives has benefits. Govt needs to talk with Forest owners before legislating more flawed restrictive rules - most people react much better and cooperatively to the Carrot than the stick and the latter if often inserted in the legislators - work it out!
They only took out enough to plant enough pine to qualify for carbon credits , and they also planted natives in other sections.
The alternative was a Whenua owned farm that would not be economic to continue farming , this allowed the farm to continue working as a farm .
As a clueless layperson I have a few questions about improving practises rather than abandoning the industry.
1) Couldn't we chip the slash onsite? Woodchips wouldn't take out bridges
2) Couldn't we line the planation boundaries with a strip of permanent native forest? The native strip would be like riparian planting on the farms, keeping the sh!t out of waterways.
3) Would about strip harvesting, where instead of clearfelling the whole forest, you harvest a strips in alternating fashion, leaving the felled strip surrounded by mature forest to again protect the land. e.g. https://www.for.gov.bc.ca/hfd/pubs/ssintroworkbook/varclear.htm
The media and politicians have focused on slash. Chipping may mitigate the damage to bridges but chipping logs (though physically difficult to do in these locations) , does not alter run-off.
I've even seen some brain surgeons on a farmer's page blaming the greenies because they apparently changed the burn the slash rules. All the while overlooking that burning (or chipping) does not solve the run-off problem and associated destruction of our lands and soils.
The person - fair points and practical on flat to gently rolling land most of whihc is not forested as it better used for Stock/Arable farming, the problem with many forest land is the slope and so far despite research have not another forestry nation - Scandinavia/Canada that has machinery capable of removing slash on a 30+ degree slope, until we do its either burn it/leave it on site or don't harvest, another alternative would be to mandate greenies to hand remove slash!!
Your not clueless , because you asked some very good questions.
Some years ago , Jeanette Fitzsimons calculated there was enough slash to replace coal at Huntly power station, and Fonterra coal fired factories.
It may not be economic to recover the slash from the entire cut , but it should be possible to recover the slash from the landing sites and sorting areas. There are some large logs left there, which probably cause the most damage if floating down the river.
These would have to be processed to a degree onsite, transported to a factory to be turned into wood pellets or similar. Unlikely to be directly economic, it will probably require a subsidy or levy .
I'm picking one of the "solutions" found in the Tairawhiti study will be either a biomass processing plant , or wood fired power station.
Hi David, great article, thanks.
Genuine question: is our climate changing such that it will become increasingly problematic to just replant natives where they previously existed?
That is, given temperature changes, and the impacts those changes will have on the latitudes in which species will do well, do we need to plant the South Island with North Island species (over-simplified, I know, but hopefully you get the drift)?
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The government then needs to buy out the current owners of these plantations and embark on a programme of careful conversion to native forest. This will come at a cost, but it needs to be done. We already have models for this in Tairāwhiti where the Gisborne District Council has started converting pine forests in its water supply catchment to native forests.
Intent right but the solution I suspect is a bit more nuanced. Government buy-back of these assets is probably unrealistic. I'm assuming that the example given with respect to GDC having bought back forestry land to replant natives - is that they bought it back post- clean fell- harvest of the pine crop.
We've got a whole lot of crops not yet harvested that should be converted to permanent forest, as their harvest will simply cause more destructive sediment run-off in our waterways and near-shore ocean coasts.
A student of mine working as a forestry consultant in the Nelson-Marlborough region did an EM project on exactly this subject a couple of years ago. The Kaituna Estuary in Havelock Harbour has been significantly impacted already by harvest run off.
Perhaps turning the particularly threatening pine forests (if they were to be harvested) into permanent forest sinks might be compensated by way of carbon credits under the ETS to permanently retire them?. We had a small pine block on a farm we used to own. It had no existing road frontage (would have had to join in with neighbouring farm forest to gain access for harvest) and was an extremely steep slope planted above one of the most beautiful pristine gully streams (we had lots of freshwater crayfish in the stream). I immediately registered it in the ETS so that it would never be economic to buy back the credits in order to harvest.
How about the "logging climate killers" investing their profits in natives. .... Both tree's and locals!
And
While they're there get thier trucks of our roads!!!
Logging is feeding the monster! .. China.
China backs Putin... Thus NZ logging backs Putin... As well as most other exporters/ countries
the quickest way to save Ukraine is to tell china we all are stopping supplying you and will divert manufacturing to Vietnam / india/ wherever, unless you back NATO and Ukraine!
Then Putin is Fecked
Forest plantings in Taraiahiti were originally government supported for both the economic and social benefits to the region and as well environmental benefits due to land stability.
Unfortunately the issue is that the current economic and social - and environmental - impacts and costs were not recognised so not considered. So yes, there is strong reason to reevaluate the net cost of the benefits originally considered.
The really unfortunate part is that the economic cost is not to the industry but to the government and the social costs to the wider community.
The forestry industry needs to step up. From the interviews of industry leaders I have seen on tv, they are not really fully owning the problem being still considerably fixated with the benefits and shifting blame.
From what I have seen, the industry practices seem largely driven by economic factors rather than environmental considerations. Examples of this are leaving the area devoid of vegetation at extreme risk of soil erosion until such time as replacement forest and other vegetation establishes itself. It is far easier and cheaper to simply leave slash where it falls. Much of the slash and silt problems relate to these two practices.
I do believe there is a future for production pine forestry - however there needs to be considerable changes to current practices.
There is a degree of foreign ownership within the NZ forestry industry and unfortunately while not all are involved in resource rape, the reality is that their primary concern will be weighted to their own economic bias and considerations.
The Green Party's legislation that is resulting in another 700,000 hectares being planted in pine forest--much of it formerly cattle and sheep farms sold to overseas interests who are paid by the NZ taxpayer for carbon credits--is not helping the situation. The floods around Nelson resulted in clogged waterways full of pine trees. Natives are needed.
I don't follow your logic.
CC are providing farmers with a good revenue stream and not requiring the land to be extracted of anything. The trees are left to grow.
Many farmer now have beef, meat, wool and carbon as an income stream - they are more diversified.
Clogged waterway have zero to do with carbon farming.
Odd the way the greens get the blame for enviro damage -propaganda at its finest.
Not odd -there are clearly edicts which come out of some echelon (arrogant, self-centred, my guessing is the conservative/dinosaur end of National). They appear with the same wording, in near-gang form. The shrill attack on Ardern was a classic, backfiring because they forgot she doesn't have their type of ego, and took their target away.
That lot perfected 180-degree deflection back in the Shipley days. Accuse them of what you're guilty of; takes them so long to wipe the mud off, that the media have moved on; crisis averted.
PDK, I thought you were actually going well up to this last rant. Ardern doesn't have "their" type of ego? LOL. Mental midget springs to mind. Not to say I have any time for Shipley and co. Her government was 2nd worst in my lifetime after current one.
I cannot believe anyone supports the current carbon farming regime! Cover the country in pines so offshore companies can carry on polluting. Absolute madness!
No , its cover the country in pines so WE can keep polluting . If we don't , we have to import carbon credits.
The ETS scheme (govt carbon credits) only covers carbon credits usuable in NZ, the ones that are exported would be private schemes not covered by ETS. I'm not 100% sure of this , and welcome correction .
The volume of silt vastly outnumbers the volume of tree debris.
That silt largely came from slips on farmland.
The pines were planted in response to the slipping farmland.
Rainwater running down a hillside will not pick up and move slash. Dams created by slipping farmland raise the river levels and eventually burst, creating a raging wall of water. This is what is picking up slash. Slash is a symptom, not the primary cause. Got to stabilize those farm slopes first.
All of them.
If you want quick results for minimal cost, you'll plant pines.
Of course - silt runoff is also a characteristic of clear felled pine forest blocks.
No sense in planting more pine for crop purposes, unless selectively logged but as such a poor grade timber, I doubt that (selective logging of pinus radiata) would be economic..
We have to re-establish permanent forest cover on these erosion prone, steep slopes.
Even a cursory look at NIWA's HWE series shows that parts of HB and points north had major floods from very early on. Esk valley, Tutaekuri river, get frequent mentions. A typical series for Esk is 1897, 1917, 1938, 1988, 2002, 2023. This predates pine slash by decades.
The question discussed isn't so much about whether or not flooding has occurred before. We know these areas to be vulnerable.
It's whether this flood event is unusual with respect to the amount of silt deposited across such a widespread area.
Where did all those tonnes and tonnes of silt come from? Was it grassed hillsides eroding; was it deforested pine crop hillsides eroding; was it native forests eroding? Was it all - in other words was there really no difference to the erosion based on land cover. It's about what kind of land cover (if any) can prevent/minimise that overwhelming silt deposit in future.
It all depends upon slope, soil type and rainfall intensity.
Bare land - first to slip
Harvested forest, grass - next to go
Small trees, native shrublands - next to go
Larger native/exotic forests - last to go
But enough water and intensity everything goes. At some point you can't stop it. A well proven hydrological point.
We all need to realise at certain points nothing stays. That's how NZ and all our flood Plains developed pre human settlement.
There are so many pictures of eroding pasture land vs older exotics and natives sitting still its not funny. We can protect against most events but some you can't do anything.
Check out carbon look up tables on MPI to see the difference in tree species type growth and sequestration rates. NZ Carbon credits are mainly used to offset NZ emissions any excess is available to be sold on the international market, and the harvested trees are used in house framing and the alternative for that is????????
In that case look at the pictures of 1000s of ha of farmland fallen away again and again. That is where most of the top soil, not mud or silt - soil (as my old soil science lecturer would remind us) has come from.
The govt is already handing out free money to refence, track pour the super on with grass seed and alls good.
Forestry Slash is a serious issue on some sites and must be addressed but the soil erosion from pastoral land slips is far worse overall. Most slash in S HB was poplar, willow and native. What do you think the slash in Auckland was? Native. Even in Napier I saw a bridge gone with "slash" it was whole Lombardy poplars.
If something is far more profitable than radiata there will be plenty of takers. It's not poor grade it's an amazing tree that employs over 40,000 plus people and is a major income earner. Kaiangaroa is the most profitable investment the NZ super fund has.
We just need to stop production on some sites and change practices on others.
Read some of the comments from Gisborne, farmers like Toby Williams and local iwi plus Philip Hope from forestry. They all want a solution together and a lot of the outside commentary is frankly uninformed, agenda driven and not based upon fact and reality.
Agreed. Pine trees sit on the hill country for 26 years, protect the land for most of that time, then the land is open for around five years and stabilised by the stumps until the stumps rot. If the forest is replanted there is a window of 2-3 years where the land is most vulnerable to slips between the tree cover being established and the stumps rotting.
Riparian strips of native bush along waterways and steep gully bottoms help catch slash when you get sediment and slash movement. It would make sense to mandate native riparian strips in exotic forests along creeks.
Nothing happens in a vacuum. Most of the mudslides in places like Asia and Africa are caused by poor people in rural areas cutting trees down for firewood or to sell for timber or charcoal. If we try to do away with farming and forestry as viable livelihoods for our rural population I don't think we are going to end up with pristine native forests. We will end up with the same results as lots of third world rural areas - people cutting trees for illegal timber operations, land clearance for subsistence farming and drug cartels and paramilitary groups ruling rural neighbourhoods.
If you want to absorb carbon through growing trees and limit the opportunity for rural people to make a living without making provision for those people to earn income then don't expect ivory-tower results. Many of the comments here are from people who earn their incomes in cities by charging fees for professional services and have little or no connection to rural areas, and little understanding of the effort needed to make a living from the land. They have a blinkered view of their own externalities and no idea of what would have happened to our rural areas if forestry had not developed to stabilise the land of the hill country and boost incomes of the local provincial economies.
NZ has a strength in having 50,000 or so farming families and many small forest owners. This helps generate ongoing wealth and entrepreneurship from our rural areas. We are quite different to South America where nations continually try to escape from the poverty trap only to fall back in, mostly due to the fact that most of the land and wealth there is held by a few hundred very wealthy families. These families collude with large foreign capital holders to restrict opportunities for anyone that isn't part of their family network.
I don't like what Labour and the Greens are doing to the rural population of our country. Rural voters are not their voters so they don't care what the effects of their policies are on the rural economy, just as National don't seem to care what the effect of low wages has on the welfare of working class city dwellers.
In our society as a whole I see a lot of money being wasted on ideological schemes that don't work (but that benefit the professional, fee charging classes) and not much money spent on actual solutions.
Well said NL Perhaps some of the commentators here may benefit from reading page 24 - a perspective from an East Coast hill country farmer
https://issuu.com/ruralnewsgroup/docs/rn_769_february_14
Yes, great contribution NL. And I read the link, CO. Interesting article.
I use this as a case study in teaching about well constructed and implemented collaborative community-led projects. In this case, the EM problem was between dairy farmers and aquaculture farmers in the catchment.
Surely the solutions for these communities is a local one between hill/forest country and valley/town landowners.
“Our project is a community approach to catchment wellbeing. It’s a story of the dairy industry and the shellfish industry coming together and looking at the catchment as a whole.”
This group had a motto: 'scientists on tap, not on top.
Same could apply to these communities - only perhaps it would change to 'government on tap, not on top'.
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