Rotorua Daily Post
  • Rotorua Daily Post home
  • Latest news
  • Business
  • Opinion
  • Lifestyle
  • Property
  • Sport
  • Video
  • Death notices
  • Classifieds

Subscriptions

  • Herald Premium
  • Viva Premium
  • The Listener
  • BusinessDesk

Sections

  • Latest news
  • On The Up
  • Business
  • Opinion
  • Lifestyle
    • All Lifestyle
    • Residential property listings
  • Property
    • All Property
    • Dairy farming
    • Sheep & beef farming
    • Horticulture
    • Animal health
    • Rural business
    • Rural life
    • Rural technology
  • Rural
  • Sport

Locations

  • Tauranga
  • Te Puke
  • Whakatāne
  • Rotorua
  • Tokoroa
  • Taupō & Tūrangi

Media

  • Video
  • Photo galleries
  • Today's Paper - E-Editions
  • Photo sales

Weather

  • Rotorua
  • Tauranga
  • Whakatāne
  • Tokoroa
  • Taupō

NZME Network

  • Advertise with NZME
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • BusinessDesk
  • Newstalk ZB
  • Sunlive
  • ZM
  • The Hits
  • Coast
  • Radio Hauraki
  • The Alternative Commentary Collective
  • Gold
  • Flava
  • iHeart Radio
  • Hokonui
  • Radio Wanaka
  • iHeartCountry New Zealand
  • Restaurant Hub
  • NZME Events

SubscribeSign In
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Home / Rotorua Daily Post / Opinion

John Ellegard: Time to see the trees for the wood, not just the problems

By John Ellegard
NZ Herald·
9 Mar, 2023 04:00 PM5 mins to read

Subscribe to listen

Access to Herald Premium articles require a Premium subscription. Subscribe now to listen.
Already a subscriber?  Sign in here

Listening to articles is free for open-access content—explore other articles or learn more about text-to-speech.
‌

Subscriber benefit

The ability to gift paywall-free articles is a subscriber only benefit. See more offers by clicking the button below.

Already a subscriber?  Sign in here
Save

    Share this article

    Reminder, this is a Premium article and requires a subscription to read.

Forestry slash in a river seen during a flight over Gisborne after Cyclone Gabrielle. Photo / Kiritapu Allan, File
Forestry slash in a river seen during a flight over Gisborne after Cyclone Gabrielle. Photo / Kiritapu Allan, File

Forestry slash in a river seen during a flight over Gisborne after Cyclone Gabrielle. Photo / Kiritapu Allan, File

Opinion by John Ellegard

OPINION

It seems to have become fashionable to slag off the forestry industry in New Zealand for all sorts of reasons. The terrible destruction from Cyclone Gabrielle is the latest case in point.

Some criticism is wholly justified. The management of slash on steep harvesting sites, in particular, has been well documented over past weeks.

The haste with which the government of the day pushed through mass planting of radiata pine tree forests across Tairāwhiti following Cyclone Bola in 1988, and then the sale of those assets to private buyers (local and overseas) for harvesting, has come back to bite in a big way.

Illustration / Rod Emmerson
Illustration / Rod Emmerson
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Logging practices that work well in many other parts of the country don’t cut the mustard on fragile sites such as north of Gisborne.

Open up the latest news from Rotorua

Get daily headlines from the Rotorua region straight to your inbox.
Please email me competitions, offers and other updates. You can stop these at any time.
By signing up for this newsletter, you agree to NZME’s Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.

I visited the East Coast in 2018 during my 12-year tenure as editor of a New Zealand forestry journal.

It was evident that the enormous amount of rain washes out slash from recently harvested forestry blocks, but also swept away whole trees (natives and pines) along with the land under them.

The forestry industry knows things must be done differently because these heavy rain events are becoming more frequent. Other land uses will need to change, too.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

But some criticism and comments about forestry are misguided. Take, for instance, the comment that we need to plant more native trees and less plantation pine. We actually need more of both.

Plantation forestry is, and will become even more, important to our future wellbeing. Aside from homes, furniture and packaging, wood will also provide the raw material to replace the plastics and many chemicals we currently derive from oil.

Discover more

Opinion

Alwyn Poole: The case for no one under 17 playing first XV rugby

08 Mar 04:00 PM

A good source of that will come from the slash that is left to rot after logging, along with low quality logs that are not pulped to make cardboard and paper.

This will be good news for all those who criticise the export of whole logs to China, where they are mostly used as concrete forming for building high-rise apartments.

We all want to see added value here in NZ but it’s just going to take time.

What about native trees being better for long-term permanent forests to suck up carbon? Fair enough, native trees do sequester more carbon over their lifetime.

However, they are slow growing and it takes many years before they are sequestering enough to make a difference.

Radiata pine can be sequestering carbon by age five, two-to-three times quicker than most natives.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

The answer, forestry researchers have determined, is to create permanent forests by planting pines alongside natives to offer shelter in harsh weather and be either cut down and used or left to fall as the natives grow up and over them.

John Ellegard: ''I’m with those who argue that radiata pines on their own should not be grown as permanent forests''. Photo / Supplied
John Ellegard: ''I’m with those who argue that radiata pines on their own should not be grown as permanent forests''. Photo / Supplied

I’m with those who argue that radiata pines on their own should not be grown as permanent forests.

They have much shorter life spans and do not sequester much carbon in old age.

To answer those who say we have too many pine plantations, from 2009 through to around 2016, huge swathes of forest were cut down to make way for dairy and other farms.

We lost almost 100,000 hectares of forest. Planting in recent years still hasn’t made up that loss.

The entire plantation estate amounts to less than 1.8 million hectares, against more than 3 million hectares of native forests across New Zealand.

Foresters have been trying to find alternatives – or more realistically, a companion – to radiata since the late 1800s.

One of the earliest ancestors of the tree we now call radiata, is a Monterey pine that still stands in the Peel Forest in Canterbury.

It was planted from seeds brought from Australia in 1859 as early farmers sought a fast-growing tree to create shelter belts. Over the years, NZ forest scientists have improved the strain and tailored it to suit conditions around NZ.

Now, the fastest-growing trees can be logged at age 25, rather than 32. Other alternatives may come along in time.

Scientists have also got an answer to one criticism of pine trees in NZ – the proliferation of wilding trees in our natural landscape.

Scientists at the Scion research centre in Rotorua have used genetic editing to turn off the ability of a pine tree to create seeds (cones). Unfortunately, our outdated rules preclude the use of any sort of genetic tools outside the laboratory in NZ.

That does need to change. Genetic editing is vastly different from genetic modification and can easily solve our wilding problem in the future. It’s been proven safe overseas.

Read More

  • Forestry waste inquiry: Pine by far biggest source ...
  • An unconventional forester: More to forestry than pine ...
  • Climate change in NZ: Pine forests would need to triple ...
  • Forestry slash inquiry: Debris-battered East Coast ...

I am a bit of an apologist for plantation forestry in NZ but I also acknowledge it can be done so much better. This country needs what forestry can supply.

I’ve met some brilliant people, from those breaking their backs in silviculture to plant seedlings in atrocious conditions; in the logging crews who are at work hours before most of us open our eyes in the morning; to dedicated researchers and also those trying hard to make their operations work better for all concerned.

We all need to learn when things go wrong, but we shouldn’t trash it all because of those mistakes.

There’s a phrase that forestry is adhering to these days: “Right tree in the right place”.

That’s a good mantra to live by.

- John Ellegard is a former editor of NZ Logger.


Subscriber benefit

The ability to gift paywall-free articles is a subscriber only benefit. See more offers by clicking the button below.

Already a subscriber?  Sign in here
Save

    Share this article

    Reminder, this is a Premium article and requires a subscription to read.

Latest from Rotorua Daily Post

Rotorua Daily Post

Farmer's harrowing hours crushed beneath tractor

04 Jul 02:00 AM
Rotorua Daily Post

Farmer's harrowing hours crushed beneath tractor

Rotorua Daily Post

'Social dysfunction at its worst': Two people sentenced over Rotorua teen prostitution ring

04 Jul 01:08 AM

There’s more to Hawai‘i than beaches and buffets – here’s how to see it differently

sponsored
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Recommended for you
Lawson fast in Silverstone practice, logs two top-10 finishes
Formula 1

Lawson fast in Silverstone practice, logs two top-10 finishes

04 Jul 04:08 PM
Serious crash closes SH1 between Taupō and Tūrangi, delays expected
New Zealand

Serious crash closes SH1 between Taupō and Tūrangi, delays expected

04 Jul 09:01 AM
Two pedestrians injured in serious Canterbury crash, road closed
New Zealand

Two pedestrians injured in serious Canterbury crash, road closed

04 Jul 08:40 AM
'Please do not do it': Man inflicted intense pain on woman during violation
New Zealand

'Please do not do it': Man inflicted intense pain on woman during violation

04 Jul 08:00 AM
'Couldn't even walk': Hospo staff foil legless drunk driver who blew six times legal limit
New Zealand

'Couldn't even walk': Hospo staff foil legless drunk driver who blew six times legal limit

04 Jul 07:20 AM

Latest from Rotorua Daily Post

Farmer's harrowing hours crushed beneath tractor

Farmer's harrowing hours crushed beneath tractor

04 Jul 02:00 AM

Peter was trapped under a tractor for hours on his Mangakino farm.

Farmer's harrowing hours crushed beneath tractor

Farmer's harrowing hours crushed beneath tractor

'Social dysfunction at its worst': Two people sentenced over Rotorua teen prostitution ring

'Social dysfunction at its worst': Two people sentenced over Rotorua teen prostitution ring

04 Jul 01:08 AM
'A f****** ugly mess': Gang boss' text after fatal hotbox attack on mate of 20 years

'A f****** ugly mess': Gang boss' text after fatal hotbox attack on mate of 20 years

04 Jul 12:24 AM
From early mornings to easy living
sponsored

From early mornings to easy living

NZ Herald
  • About NZ Herald
  • Meet the journalists
  • Newsletters
  • Classifieds
  • Help & support
  • Contact us
  • House rules
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of use
  • Competition terms & conditions
  • Our use of AI
Subscriber Services
  • Rotorua Daily Post e-edition
  • Manage your print subscription
  • Manage your digital subscription
  • Subscribe to Herald Premium
  • Subscribe to the Rotorua Daily Post
  • Gift a subscription
  • Subscriber FAQs
  • Subscription terms & conditions
  • Promotions and subscriber benefits
NZME Network
  • Rotorua Daily Post
  • The New Zealand Herald
  • The Northland Age
  • The Northern Advocate
  • Waikato Herald
  • Bay of Plenty Times
  • Hawke's Bay Today
  • Whanganui Chronicle
  • Viva
  • NZ Listener
  • Newstalk ZB
  • BusinessDesk
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • iHeart Radio
  • Restaurant Hub
NZME
  • About NZME
  • NZME careers
  • Advertise with NZME
  • Digital self-service advertising
  • Book your classified ad
  • Photo sales
  • NZME Events
  • © Copyright 2025 NZME Publishing Limited
TOP
search by queryly Advanced Search