Small cost and effort for native regeneration — mainly takes time

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

It has been known for a long time that vulnerable land in Tairāwhiti is unsuitable for harvested tree crops and livestock. These soils are too fragile, catchments are steep, streams are short and fast-flowing in rain, dead and dying wetlands still want to be wetlands.

Outside my backdoor is hundreds of hectares of 50/60-year-old naturally regenerating kanuka and rewarewa forest sequestering carbon. When farmed, this mostly steep land was pockmarked in large to small slips — virtually none are visible today. The boundary babbling brook is close to pristine — no silt and the water is drinkable. The birds are coming back, spreading seeds.

Restoration began the very day the land was left alone. After 10 years, significant recovery. There are jobs to be had in pest control to let the understory grow (there were never any effective fences). Luckily possums, goats, deer and stock don’t eat kanuka/rewarewa.

Kanuka and rewarewa seeds may not survive a pine rotation so once existing pine trees are harvested, seedlings are planted directly behind the pine stumps.

Slash (not only pine), slips and sediment will be a problem for some years but will reduce exponentially as the land and catchments stabilise. Farm foresters have demonstrated how to eliminate/minimise slash from entering waterways.

The real costs and effort are in the “clean up” from the weather that has exposed inappropriate land use (and behaviour) — causing damage to infrastructure, property, (food) production, people’s routines and the environment.

Ultimately central governments past and present are largely responsible — they allowed pine plantations without using a terrain stability zoning system and land-use capability mapping . . . along with EWC and plantation management companies and their assurances of “Forestry for Life” and “trust the science” spin.

GDC tried and failed — but it was a failure waiting to happen.

A minister believed an inquiry into this exploitive industry (environment and contractors) was unnecessary.

They blame God and the weather — fortunately they live in a country where you are still permitted a sense of humour . . . at least until the Puritans and hyper-sensitives win a general election.

A question: in what decade did the science on sustainable land use kick in?

Wayne Rickard