Forest industry submissions ‘focused on solutions’

A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.

The Forest Owners Association has told the ministerial inquiry into land use in Tairāwhiti that the region’s future must include more trees for land stability.

However, it appreciates forest practices also have to improve with increasing land-use risks from climate change.

The FOA has released its submission to the inquiry. It says it is looking at solutions to the wood and silt damage caused by cyclones Hale and Gabrielle in downstream areas.

FOA president Grant Dodson said technical assessments showed the two cyclones shifted 100 million tonnes of soil in the region, with half of that then getting into waterways.

“Foresters lost areas of healthy, growing trees up to 10 years old in landslides. We’d not experienced that before. Climate change has altered the rules.

“FOA and Eastland Wood Council in particular are focused on solutions in our submissions, and these must provide incomes for people in the region.

“We’d expect the future of Gisborne and northern Hawke’s Bay for a long time to come will continue to be based on forestry and farming.

“Let’s make it clear, though, that the terrain and remoteness make both forestry and hill country farming in this region a very difficult enterprise.

“Accelerating climate change makes it even more difficult.

“Stabilising the landscape to prevent woody debris flows will take decades, and it’s unrealistic to expect it to ever be completely achieved.

“But there are short-term hopes that both land uses will be able to process more of their raw material output in the region itself, using wood fuel which would otherwise cause risk left on the harvest sites,” Mr Dodson. “As long as the economics can be worked out we could eventually get to where no energy source needs to be imported into Tairāwhiti ever again.

“For forestry itself, we would anticipate a realocation away from where some of the higher-risk plantation forests are.

“On one hand, we expect a government-supported managed withdrawal of forest harvesting in the more vulnerable slopes and weaker soil geologies.

“On the other hand, the same increase in slip vulnerability on farmland would most likely lead to planting pine forests and other land stability plantings on much of that land, so long as harvest risk was reduced.

“Without doubt there will be native tree planting for land stabilisation and biodiversitity.

“But it has to be realised that indigneous tree establishment is expensive and it’s difficult for slow-growing native trees to become established with the region predicted to have more droughts and ongoing storm damage from now on.

“And unlike plantation forestry and farming, planting native trees doesn’t produce an income product. Even their carbon sequstration capacity is also insignificant until many decades into the future.”

He said he hoped the inquiry would set up a structured and wide-ranging plan for reform of land use, the downsteam economy and more resilient transport infastructure in Tairāwhiti, which would compel future governments to support.

“Land-users themselves can only do so much. There are two other vital components in making these ambitions work.

“One is committed engagement by central government. The other necessary factor is the close involvement and support of the local communities.”