Video: Right tree, right place and right management regime important after slash damage, says Stuart Nash
Despite the damage slash caused to East Coast infrastructure after Cyclone Gabrielle, the Forestry Minister still believes forestry is the answer, but says it is about “right tree, right place and the right management regime”.
In a wide-ranging interview with Hawke’s Bay App, Stuart Nash also defended the government’s decision to limit an inquiry into slash and land use after Cyclone Gabrielle to the Tairāwhiti region and exclude Hawke’s Bay.
The inquiry will happen over a two-month period and will be chaired by former National Party Government Minister Hekia Parata, who lives on the East Coast. She will be assisted by former regional council chief executive Bill Bayfield and forestry engineer Matthew McCloy.
The inquiry will investigate past and current land-use practices and the impact of woody debris including forestry slash and sediment on communities, livestock, buildings and the environment. It will also look at associated economic drivers and constraints.
Nash says he thinks the ministerial inquiry focused on Tairāwhit will be enough for the government to get answers.
“The reason for that is that 25 per cent of the North Island’s highly erodible soils are actually based in the Tairāwhiti region. And 75% of the Tairāwhit region is hill country. So quite a unique region of this country in terms of soils and topography. I do believe that forestry is the answer, I really do. However, it's about right tree, right place and right management regime.”
“In the past, certainly after Cyclone Bola, a lot of the Tairāwhiti region was planted up and most of that was planted for production. We're now learning that on some of the slopes that these trees were planted on, perhaps no harvesting should take place.”
“I mean we're talking about quite complex hauler operations where you basically cut a tree down here, you haul it up to a skid site and you cut it into grades or lengths and that gets trucked out. Quite complex, quite dangerous.”
“In some regions, we now believe that those trees well actually should never be cut down because of A, the danger or B, the ecological and conservation aspect risk is too high. So we are learning more and more about this.“
Nash says the National Environmental Standard for Plantation Forester (NESPF) provides an overarching set of regulations under which foresters must operate on harvesting sites.
“Now, councils have the ability to put in place regulations and rules that are more stringent than the NESPF, Gisborne did. And so when you're harvesting in Gisborne, you had to get a resource consent where in a lot of areas you didn't have to.”
“We've just done a big review of that. What we found is by and large across the country, the NESPF is about right. But then there are some areas like Tairāwhiti where we do need to put in place special measures. And that's what the recommendations that will come out of this inquiry, I suspect, will feed into the final version of what the National Environmental Standards for Plantation Forestry looks like.”
Nash says “everyone” in the industry recognises that there needs to be a change.
“There's no doubt about that. And so they're waiting to see what's going to come out of this inquiry. And in some cases, there was a big event in the Tairāwhiti region in 2018. And out of that, a whole lot of work was done around slash. So keep in mind, slash, slash is actually the woody debris left over after harvesting operation.”
Nash says in Esk Valley a lot of harvesting slash was responsible for damage to the bridges and stop banks as well, but this is not the case in other areas.
"If you go out to Puketapu for example, and look at what blew out those stop banks, there's a lot of whole trees, there's a lot of Poplars, there's 40 years of catchment or planting in there. So not so much forestry slash as there is in the East Valley for example. But we all know that things need to be done differently and that's what will happen.”
Nash says it is important to remember the role forestry plays in providing jobs for locals.
“if you look at Tairāwhiti, you've got about one in four families who have someone employed either directly or indirectly with the forest sector. I do know that the forest industry did get down on those beaches and work as hard as they could in terms of chipping those logs and clearing up a lot of the mess. I'm also aware that there's a number in the forest sector that actually went on some of the farms and helped with the clean-up.”
