As the clean up in Hawke’s Bay and the Gisborne continues, its important to remember the resources farmers and growers need is ongoing and the reality of the dire situation for many is only beginning. The Rural Support Trust and Beef+Lamb are doing a superb job in coordinating ongoing support. If you can help in any get in touch with either of those organisations.
This week Dr Adam Forbes from Forbes Ecology joined me to discuss the recent flood events and what is need in terms of land management.
Firstly I asked him what his first impressions were when first arrived to the hardest hit areas, he said it was extremely confronting to see acute devastation. Sites that he had been familiar with for decades, through restoring wetlands, and native plantings have been absolutely erased from the landscape. He saw hedgerows upside down, and he likened it a war zone.
“I think the scale and the nature and the strength of what happened during that event is hard to comprehend. The volumes and the forces in play are clearly enormous. So yeah, that was probably my first realization was wow, this is really a powerful big event that's occurred here.”
It’s important to remember that this isn't the first time these types of events have happened in these regions, and Forbes says what we need to do is take a serious look at how to respond in a manner that actually makes a difference in the future so that we're not in 30 years time having the same conversations in same devastating effects. So in his mind that needs to be front and centre in terms of what happens next.
I believe in the right tree in the right place, but I do think we have a forestry catastrophe on our hands especially farming carbon and I don't think it's fully being recognised yet. Forestry in my mind has its place and it works well integrated into a farming model, of course we need forestry to a certain degree and at some level, it has export value in terms of products produced from the timber and it provides a revenue stream for farmers. I asked Forbes if he thinks we have a forestry problem, particularly carbon farming and whether the industry needs to be managed better.
“Yeah that plant-and-leave carbon farming I think that that's setting up major problems for future generations, in the sense that those forests that are planted in the notion that they will replace themselves to be permanent.”
“Management of those forests is absolutely essential to see regeneration occurring and a sense that you could have a replacement canopy. Why would we necessarily expect those investors [carbon forestry]to be invested in controlling landscape scales, and analysing the forest in terms of the amount of regeneration and what level of management is required? And the thing is, the management topic really goes across most of our forests, not just those transition forests but into native forests as well. So you know, and you mentioned the sheep and beef farmers and the good stuff that they're doing, and I agree, a lot of those people are also grappling with these management issues when the management tasks cross boundaries, and you know the neighbours might have a very different view or they might be absentee or something and it just becomes quite tricky. So the forest management topic is a really big one. And I think it underpins most forest land use and like if you look at what's happened in Tairāwhiti, putting aside the plantations but just getting permanent forest cover is flawed at the moment because there are so many goats there are so many deer, there are weed issues, and unless we can address those management issues, we're on shaky ground in terms of having permanent forest.”
Forbes asks, what more evidence do we need that the forestry industry needs to be seriously looked at and in particular lock-up-and-walk-away forests, he also went into some alternative options to pine trees.
Listen to the podcast to hear the full story
Angus Kebbell is the Producer at Tailwind Media. You can contact him here.
16 Comments
Think of pine plantations like a flock of sheep. Leave sheep to their own devices, and you don't end up with a field full of soft fluffy wool and tasty lamb and mutton. You end up with a tangled, diseased mess. Same goes for pines.
Unfortunately these sorts of counterproductive, dead-end things are all we're prepared to do for our environment. Real change is too hard. We'll end up getting what we deserve, I suppose.
Even healthy regenerating native bush requires a lot of expensive active management to control the pests and weeds. And yet there's the fantasy that you can plant pines and by some miracle it will turn itself into native forest (conveniently this will happen after the people who've mined it for the carbon credits are gone).
the ETS is skewed to plant pines, "carbon payment" is 3 x native trees. There has been no debate, no mandate, yet another piece of labour and greens stealth agenda by legislation. A native tree forest over the long term will capture more carbon than pines and is best for the land and landscape.
That's because pine trees sequester 3 times more carbon than Natives. Exotic hardwoods actually have better tables than pines. I think you'll find the ETS was started under National.
Native tree planting was covered by the billion trees initiative.
Pine forest will revert to Native , but your talking 100 years plus. They could be used as a nursery crop for natives , but that would require work. I don't know if any study has been done on comparative timelines , i suspect early on forest that has been managed a a native nurse crop would show better results , but at the 100 year mark would not make that much difference. Of course 100 years is not even in the vocabulary.
That 3 times more carbon than natives value is being contested...
https://pureadvantage.org/carbon-sequestration-by-native-forest-setting-the-record-straight/
Yes . Of course on a 100Ha + size forest , the carbon is measured , not arrived at by tables.
Will be interested to see if any native forest measurements change the thinking.
I've been looking at fast growing natives , that are not traditonally timber trees. Akeake for one , and wondering how it will res[ond to pruning to obtain a single trunk.
This is the way I see carbon farming
pines are quick growing and have a short life span maybe out to 150 years or more?
so if they are planted at the same time they will start dying the same time
when they all die will they emit the carbon back int the atmosphere, (my guess ) is yes and lots of it, maybe not all.
Also the needles and dead branches rotting on the forest floor. The leaching of these needles runoff into our waterways,
a good friend remorseful telling me about the massive carbon forest about to be planted around his home telling me the whole family was effected with hay fever and especially pine pollen, why this is not a recourse consent issue is beyond me.
now as a retired firefighter how anyone cannot see the implications is unfathomable, I guess one hot windy summers day between now and the next 150 fireless years we may find out.
with health and safety rules around firefighting I believe there will be no aggressive firefighting except with helicopters and the fire service will be solely involved with evacuation, (this is my supposition)
however after walking through an unpruned mature pine plantation recently with a lot of dead needles hung up in the lower unpruned branches I was very glad to get away from it.
apparently there is no obligation to maintain roads dams etc
one last thing, again my thoughts. The only real way to store the carbon absorbed by these trees would to be dig a big hole into the ground and bury them.
oldest is 163 years in 2020 , according to this site. https://www.monumentaltrees.com/en/records/nzl/
Quite a few pines and other exotics on the Coromandel , said to have been planted by miners in the gold rushes ,pre 1900.
I saw that link. There are ones in UK that are nearly 250 years old!
Still can't find the article which said the average was 90. Maybe i dreamt it...
Edit: knew I'd seen it somewhere https://www.nationalarboretum.act.gov.au/living-collections/forests-and-trees/forest-76
Heres a link to all the measured data in the ETS by species. This is thousands of ha of exotics and native measured scientifically. If you can use a SS you can work it out and see what sequesters what.
https://www.mpi.govt.nz/dmsdocument/44647-Area-weighted-Field-Management-Approach-FMA-table-
Just released today - Imagery from last week over the whole area. Angus and his B and L masters, who pay him to write this stuff by the way, might explain how these farms north of Napier are going to survive and explains where the silt is actually coming from. It also shows what a lot of this land needs to be in - permanent forest - native and older exotic all ok. Harvesting will have to change a lot to continue on a lot of land as well.
Whatever the lifespan of pines are it’s short . Question remains ,how much of the co2 is stored away back into the earth from the so called excess that us humans have supposed to have emitted, Can we protect those trees from fire or disease. Can we afford to waste land that will be needed for food production in the future, have no studies been done on carbon sequestration of grass, my observation is grass is far safer and can produce food as well, most farmers if they have ever dismantled an old fence must have found at least 1 wire under the ground, the earth under the grass is usually black, is this carbon, I’ve seen the bottom 3 wires on flat land underground.
is this carbon buildup in the soil, why do archeologists have to dig to find relics. Where does all this topsoil come from. All these questions make me believe carbon farming as the biggest Ponzi scheme in our history and pride and money is really what this is about.
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