A Gisborne forestry company says it has lost hundreds of hectares of trees worth tens of millions of dollars due to Cyclone Gabrielle.
Neil Woods, chief executive of Aratu Forests, said the company had been severely impacted by Cyclone Gabrielle with landslides taking out strips of 10-to-20 year old trees, roots and all.
Aratu Forests manages about 27,000 hectares of pine plantations across about 35,000 hectares of land. It has one of the largest forestry estates in Gisborne.
Woods said most of what the company has lost and ended up in waterways isn’t slash, or forestry waste, but full trees.
“We would have thought those trees would have been stabilising the sites, and typically it does, so we are doing a lot of work on why those ages [of trees], was it soil or sickness, or did it just happen?”
Woods said it had native trees in the Aratu Estate and they have also slid down hillsides into rivers.
“This is the vast majority of the material that we see in mobilising onto beaches and properties. There is some form of sawn-off material, but the vast majority is actually these other trees that have come out, the younger trees.”
Neil said the firm was working to understand why this had occurred but it was still difficult to access sites.
It had satellite images from after Cyclone Hale and new images post Cyclone Gabrille to compare, he said, and had done some aerial flights over the estate.
“The imagery of that is coming through now and we're starting to analyse it. In one catchment we've got 35 hectares of the 250 hectares in the catchment has been affected. So that's the scale, it's about 15% or something else that age class [of trees] has gone … It's just too hard and dangerous, frankly, to get in there and wander, and we are using drones as well.”
Aratu would need to decide whether to clear entire hillsides where there were strips of damage, or what to do with areas in a catchment where trees are gone.
He said the business wouldn’t feel an immediate economic impact but there would be a “hole” in about 15 years time when those lost trees should have been harvested.
Woods said from here the industry had to figure out what it can grow on this land, and what the best use of it is.
“Some trees shouldn't have been planted where they are. Some probably shouldn't be harvested, and once harvested some shouldn't be put back in pine and maybe not a native either, but some other vegetation used.”
Nash gets nosy
The forestry industry is under intense pressure for slash, or left over tree waste, being washed onto beaches and taking out bridges in heavy rainfall. There have been repeated examples in Gisborne where there is heavy forestry activity.
Despite initially rebuffing attempts to put the industry under scrutiny, Forestry Minister Stuart Nash succumbed to public pressure and announced a ministerial enquiry into land use, woody debris and sediment-related damage in Tairāwhiti/Gisborne and Wairoa.
A three-person panel including former National Party government minister Hon Hekia Parata will make recommendations to improve land use including changes to practices and regulation at central and local government levels, Nash said in a statement.
New Zealand Institute of Forestry president James Treadwell said he is “fully up” for a review of forestry practices but he was concerned the focus was on finding a scapegoat for what has been a “massive massive event”.
He said some foresters had lost 15-to-20 hectares of trees and people don’t understand the extent of the damage.
“I think they’re going to be shocked when they see some of the images from inland.”
Treadwell said the focus of the inquiry shouldn’t be narrowed to forestry and needed to be longer than the two months scheduled.
“We need to be looking at all land use, and it will be different from region to region. Obviously here we are talking about the East Coast and Hawke’s Bay. Where should we have forestry? What practices need to change? Where should we have farming? Which practices need to change? Where do we need to have natives? How do we manage that later?”
Treadwell said its easy to say its logging material coming down, but in some areas it doesn’t matter what is planted - it’s coming down anyway.
“We’ve got pictures of 19-20 year old trees that have disappeared. If there’s highly erodible soils and we’re going to have more of these events, how do we protect the downstream effects? There are some hard decisions to make, and actually maybe we don’t rebuild in these areas and maybe we can change some farming and forestry practices, and there might be other areas where we take the risk. I don’t think we’re going to get the serious discussion we need to have."
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