RMA breaches alleged at Ngakoroa Road forest

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

Another of the region’s forestry companies is facing prosecution by Gisborne District Council for alleged poor harvesting practices said to have come to light after storm events in March of last year.

A case against Forwood Forest Management Limited and its director, Matthew Kyle Strijbosch, was called for the first time in Gisborne District Court yesterday and adjourned for a further preliminary hearing on June 12.

Strijbosch and the company each face 11 representative charges laid under the Resource Management Act (RMA) in relation to Papakorokoro Forest to the north-west of the city at Ngakoroa Road.

Gisborne District Council claims that between December 20, 2021, and April 27 last year the company constructed a skid site and forestry road in a manner that breached RMA rules for land use.

Those and other harvesting activities were said to have adversely impacted two streams in the area — the Mangaoai and Mangaruaki.

The council alleges the Mangaoai Stream was notably affected between April 27 and June 8 last year when logs, waste wood and fill were deposited into it. Those same materials were allegedly left on land in circumstances where they could enter the stream.

The charges relating to the Mangaruaki Stream are for a period between March 23 and April 27 last year when the company allegedly disturbed the stream bed by putting two culverts and fill in it to construct a crossing that was not allowed under relevant regulations.

The prosecution comes at a time when the council’s performance as regulator of the region’s forest industry has come under fire in public submissions to a ministerial inquiry into land use in Tairāwhiti and Wairoa.

The two-month inquiry, into its sixth week, was set up in the wake of damage caused by forestry debris during this year’s cyclones Hale and Gabrielle.

Former National government minister Hekia Parata, who is chairing the three-person independent panel, spoke to The Gisborne Herald last week about the general nature of 313 public submissions that were received.

Ms Parata said there was a sense in the submissions that the industry was unregulated and unmonitored.

“I think everybody is keen to see significant improvement in forestry practices and that there is a sense that because forestry has been unregulated, unmonitored and not particularly compliant, that has led to some exploitation of the land in that numbers of trees have been planted in places that really are unsustainable,” Ms Parata said.

There had also been “consistent” concern about the council’s capacity to issue appropriate consents and then monitor for compliance and take action where forestry companies had not observed good practice, she said.

In February this year, the council moved to prosecute two other forestry companies and their directors for alleged breaches of resource consents also said to have been revealed by storm events last March.

The defendants in that case are Samnic Forest Management Ltd and directors Richard Hayes, Scotty Barry Funnell and Gavin Francis Fortune; and Forest Management Solutions and director Warren Peter Hughes.

Each are charged with discharging contaminants — sediment and forestry waste — on to land in circumstances where it entered or could enter water, and for failing to comply with restrictions on land use.