Forestry debris devastated Tairāwhiti properties, beaches and infrastructure in Cyclone Gabrielle a year ago.
One year ago, all hell broke loose in Tairāwhiti when Cyclone Gabrielle propelled 1.4 million tonnes of wood debris down the East Coast’s steep, fragile hillsides into rivers and on to bridges, homes, farms, roads and beaches below.
Though the region, which has some of the world’s most erodable soils, was familiar with the effects of extreme weather events - just a month earlier Cyclone Hale had plunged it into a state of emergency and sent a mountain of wood debris and silt barrelling down hillsides - Gabrielle brought one battering too many from its forestry sector.
Gisborne Mayor Rehette Stoltz called it “carnage” and the reason for the outrage and despair was evident to the whole country after essential bridges and roads were smashed, scenic beaches turned into dangerous eyesores - a child died playing in the debris - and property wrecked.
As the region’s tiny, and only, local authority, the Gisborne District Council - its rates income in the 2022-2023 year was barely $81 million - faced an enormous infrastructure recovery effort, the then Labour Government launched a ministerial inquiry into local land use. The district council had successfully prosecuted a handful of forestry companies over operational rules breaches since 2018 and the people of Tairawhiti were in full revolt against an important, but now loathed, contributor to the local economy.
A year on, what’s changed in the Tairāwhiti forestry industry, last valued in 2020 at $480m?
According to council chief executive Nedine Thatcher Swann, there’s been “a huge amount of work achieved”.
More than 165,000 tonnes of the last debris assault have been removed, she says.
The Tairāwhiti Resource Management Plan is also being reviewed. As part of this, council staff are mapping the most at-risk land, which will help identify where current land use is appropriate and signal where a land use change is needed.
The council, she says, is working with the local forestry sector to ensure steep, erosion-prone hill country “is planted and harvested with care”, and a dedicated forestry taskforce team has been created “to ensure proper land use practices to reduce the high sediment load and waste wood entering waterways”.
The local forestry industry has a vastly different view on progress.
There’s been a “knee-jerk” reaction of new rules that risks “a huge number of unintended consequences”, says Eastland Wood Council chairman Warren Rance.
Worse, he says, there’s still a scary, big danger lurking in the hills.
“They are focusing on the smallest proportion of the [debris] problem. They are not focusing on the huge amount of wood up there which is an inherent risk associated with the land. It’s a persistent risk that’s going to be around for the rest of my life at least,” Rance says.
“In our industry, we have a terrible feeling in the pits of our stomach because at any moment, in any event, we will see mobilisation of that wood into our waterways.”
What Rance fears is the official response to the destruction is focused on debris or “slash” - offcuts from plantation pine that’s been processed. But the big danger is from large trees with “massive root balls” upended when the land has failed in storms, along with the trees that need to be harvested in the next seven to eight years due to their height and weight.
“Thousands of hectares” of trees are involved here, Rance says.
“If we don’t harvest those trees at the right time, there is a financial implication but more importantly, it’s a big environmental issue.”
The Gisborne District Council’s current management proposals for forestry appear only to deal with operational rules and land retirement, Rance believes. The industry also “desperately” requires certainty from new policy and so far isn’t seeing it, he says.
“At the moment some of the proposals being put forward will be challenging to the viability of the industry - for example [moves] to limit the size of the clear-cut area within a catchment. But we don’t have certainty about that.”
Rance warns that in the Gisborne region when pine trees grow too large, their stability is compromised.
“If we don’t harvest in a certain window of time, those trees start to fall over and it doesn’t take a massive [weather] event to make that happen. When they fall over, as we saw in Gabrielle, they become available to enter waterways. It also creates an entry point for water to enter underlying rock which further destabilises the land.
“If we are working on catchment or harvest limits of a certain size, the inevitable result will be the age of trees will increase to a point where environmentally it becomes a real concern, as well as a financial concern. Also, when trees become very large, we struggle to manage them with our machines.”
The forestry industry is calling for a “scientific”, collaborative approach to Tairāwhiti’s longstanding land erosion problem. The fragility of the land prompted government initiatives for planting of huge swathes of pine trees after Cyclone Bola in March 1988. It is these trees that have fallen over in recent storms or are due to be felled within eight years.
“There’s no disputing the fact that a large proportion of [the debris] is pine from production forests,” says Rance.
“A large proportion is from standing trees that have had no operational activity associated with it yet. A very small proportion is from wood that has mobilised after [harvesting] operations and [is] associated with poor practice... We have worked really hard to improve our operations since 2018 [the Queen’s Birthday weekend storm].
“What we saw in Gabrielle was the mobilisation of material held within the system or even buried since 2018.
“The bigger proportion of pine [debris] from recent assessments is material that has mobilised when hillsides have failed. These are trees in the middle of their growing rotation which have been serving a very good purpose [in holding up the land] and been on top of land that has mobilised downhill. This is our major concern for the industry.”
Rance says the land was “saturated” by weather events by the time Gabrielle struck. The land failed and the wood on it - which included native cover - went downhill with it, he says.
“We realise it is a forestry problem, to the extent that society believes it is all within our control to manage. Our view is that it is a land problem.”
Federated Farmers leader Toby Williams, a Tairāwhiti sheep and beef farmer, agrees.
“We need to see changes in how we forest and farm. The Gisborne District Council is proposing a targeted rate for farmers and foresters to help with the clean-up, which I think we will have to support.”
The proposed rate would be a levy on top of a 29 per cent proposed increase in general rates over the next three years, he says.
Williams says the wood debris clean-up has been a case of two steps forward and one step back, with heavy rain over winter.
“But clean-up crews are back to farms and rivers and doing a pretty good job. It’s not something that can be solved within the next one or two years. It’s a four- or five-year journey.”
More than 200 farms were damaged by wood debris in Cyclone Gabrielle. Roads were also extensively damaged, trapping farmers and other residents for up to weeks after.
Williams says the region needs to focus on adding value onshore to products like wood and meat and wool.
“We need to be thinking as a whole community and local and central government, how do we actually change the model? How do we ensure we can still [get] these products out to market in a feasible and affordable way?”
Adding value to products would help finance local roading network maintenance. Williams says some of the region’s roads started as Māori walking tracks, gradually being widened to take horses and carts and then vehicles. He notes Tairāwhiti covers a “huge” land area, has a very small ratepayer base and possibly the biggest roading network in the country.
To add value to its products, it needs Government funding, he says.
“In the Taupō region when they put in the Kaingaroa [forest], they had government-subsidised paper mills. On the East Coast [when pine plantations were planted] we didn’t.”
Williams says the cost of getting trees out of Tairāwhiti has become greater than forestry returns, and the industry “is almost at a standstill”.
“As it currently sits, north of Tolaga Bay it’s uneconomic to harvest those trees and send them to market. Forestry and farming have had massive cost increases and it’s affected the viability of forestry we already have.
“It’s critical onshore processing needs to be accelerated. We should have been looking at this 10 years ago rather than reacting now. People [in forestry] have had to move away.”
While Eastland Wood Council’s Rance says the sector has been lifting its operating standards since 2018 and there have been no major operational changes since Gabrielle, Williams has “definitely” seen a change in sector attitude a year on.
“They don’t want to be in the headlines all the time. Lessons have definitely been learned and they’re trying to do things better. Once trees have been harvested, they can’t just leave them there. It needs to be managed so massive trees aren’t coming down in bad weather.”
Williams believes the sector is “pretty well advanced” in discussions over how it replants in the future.
“We’ve got to set some rules that help prevent some of the issues seen in the past. But we shouldn’t discount the impact of storms that size - incredibly large storms on a very fragile environment.”
New Zealand has voted in a new Government since Gabrielle. What’s its position on the future of East Coast forestry?
Environment Minister Penny Simmonds says her ministry’s been working “extensively” with local authorities affected by Gabrielle.
“Changes were made last year by Cabinet around the management of commercial forestry with regards to reducing the risks to life, assets and the environment. Clearer rules on harvesting practices were put in place and new requirements to remove large pieces of slash, provided this was done safely,” her office said in a statement to the Herald.
“Ultimately, councils have responsibility for the management of forestry in their areas through the National Environmental Standards for Commercial Forestry and the National Environment Standards for Freshwater.
“Tairāwhiti has very steep topgraphy and unique geology and needs unique solutions to manage environmental effects and the health and safety of forestry workers.”
The Ministry for the Environment was implementing many of the recommendations of last year’s ministerial inquiry into land use and was working in Tairāwhiti with the district council, the forestry sector, iwi and landowners on the wood debris problems.
It was also supporting the district council to ensure its resource management plan, currently under review, had the “right controls on forestry practice and other land use activities in the region”.
“Given these actions, the minister is confident these measures will contribute to addressing land use issues in Tairāwhiti, including those relating to forestry.”
Andrea Fox joined the Herald as a senior business journalist in 2018 and specialises in writing about the dairy industry, agribusiness, exporting and the logistics sector and supply chains.
Freedom has 13 stores in New Zealand.