Protecting native forests key to hitting emission reduction targets – Paul Button

Canopy Tours general manager Paul Button.

THREE KEY FACTS

• Mammals consuming seedlings, leaf litter, leaves, buds, bark and branches, as well as the killing of trees, reduces the ability of ecosystems to lock in carbon, according to Forest & Bird.
• University of Sheffield researchers found fungal networks in the soil store more than 13 gigatonnes of carbon around the world.
• On average, the temperature globally has warmed by more than 1.1C within little more than a century.

Last month, the Government’s Emissions Reduction Plan hit the printers, claiming we are on track to come within a whisker of our emissions goals; largely, the research reckons, due to some shiny new technology in the works.

I’m a blue-sky guy at the worst of times, but relying on early-stage technology as a cornerstone of our climate plan feels to me like a fool’s errand.

A bunch of the agricultural emissions reductions can be attributed to a business making technology to stop cows farting as much, despite not having their product on the market yet.

As is often the case with these kinds of reports, the details are in the stuff that isn’t said.

Recent history has shown us the unsaid stuff is most likely going to be pine, and lots of it.

Pine is fast-growing and okay at capturing carbon as the trees grow, but the best course of action to make a real dent in our carbon goals is protecting what we already have and know works: our unique native forest.

New Zealand’s forests are an amazing carbon sink, drinking up and storing an incredible 1.45 billion tonnes of carbon through the above-ground vegetation alone.

Unfortunately, as has been well-publicised, the state of these forests is in rapid decay due to the onslaught of introduced rats, possums, wallabies, deers, goats and other ungulates.

Our Predator Free 2050 plan aims to address this, but funding cut after funding cut means the goal is looking less likely. What we really need to do is fix our Emissions Trading Scheme to recognise the role our forests play in sequestering carbon.

Effectively, that means merging our goals to be carbon-zero and predator-free by 2050 so they’re rowing in the same direction.

The reason they aren’t, I believe, is that people don’t understand how amazing New Zealand’s native forests are at absorbing and storing carbon.

A Forest & Bird report from 2021 found pests chewed away at an estimated 3.4 million tonnes of carbon dioxide worth of vegetation every single year. For context, the Government’s emissions plan hopes to reduce our emissions by a total of 4.65 million tonnes over the next decade.

These pests and predators are essentially up there with New Zealand’s worst polluters.

Following that logic, two years in a predator-free environment would achieve more than the Government’s plan hopes to achieve in emissions reductions by 2035.

Carbon sinks

Further to this point, there’s growing evidence the soil beneath these trees may be an overlooked sponge, soaking up carbon at amazing rates.

In 2023, New Scientist reported on University of Sheffield research which found fungal networks in the soil store over 13 gigatonnes of carbon around the world, equivalent to 36% of yearly global fossil fuel emissions.

When testing the soil at the section of ancient forest we restored at Rotorua Canopy Tours, with nearby control sites without any predator control, researchers found our soil was storing five times more carbon than the sites left to their own devices.

We already know about the merits of the above-ground foliage in our native forests, but it’s a matter of time and research before we understand the full value of carbon stored in the soil.

All that currently stands in the way of these predators taking over our taonga forests are a patchwork of groups including iwi, community groups, the Department of Conservation and a small smattering of commercial operators fighting to get rid of pests.

The thing stopping us reaching our predator-free goals is also the thing that stands in the way of our emissions goals: a lack of resources.

Most of us do this mahi on the smell of an oily rag. These operations need more money, time, and dedicated Government expenditure.

These are exactly the things carbon credits were invented to support, but currently they’re being seconded to other proposed schemes unlikely to attract money from investors or polluting businesses.

Our carbon-zero and predator-free ambitions shouldn’t be competing for resources.

Forests are our best land-based storage for carbon. Pests are destroying these forests.

Predator Free 2050 isn’t an optional extra next to our carbon goals. It’s the only feasible way to reach them.