KEY POINTS:
Forestry Minister Jim Anderton says a forestry scheme which has so far paid over $30 million in subsidies is failing and landowners should be forced to plant erosion-prone land.
He has leaned on the Gisborne District Council to provide the "stick" in the subsidised forestry scheme which has so far paid $27m (before GST) in incentives for landowners. It is set to pay another $91m - $6.5m a year until 2020.
Mr Anderton said the East Coast Forestry Project launched in 1992 - partly to counter erosion on the unstable hill country of the Gisborne-East Coast region - was failing to cope with massive erosion and slips on the coast.
He said the Government subsidies for tree planting were not sufficient to fix the significant, erosion problem which remained in the Gisborne district.
"There is an urgent need for a "stick" to go along with the "carrot", Mr Anderton said. He wants the council to force landowners to plant gullies and other at-risk land by 2018.
Mr Anderton also released a review of the project which said the East Coast erosion carried lessons for other regions of the country.
"Recent flooding in the Manawatu and Bay of Plenty has clearly demonstrated how vulnerable New Zealand's hill country is to storm-initiated erosion and the damages that follow," it said.
"The policies of the 1980s encouraged vegetation clearance, stocking and fertiliser application on marginal land ... this management of marginal land is not sustainable"
The report said landowners were seldom held responsible for the off-site costs caused by soil erosion: silt building up river beds and causing erosion of river banks, increased flooding, and loss of low-lying productive land.
This was causing a failure in the land market: "It appears that land markets poorly reflect the extent of erosion in land prices".
The high returns in pastoral farming meant land prices were high, even for erosion-prone land, creating a negative incentive for landowners to voluntarily deal with erosion.
Global warming would increase the magnitude of future storms and the nation could expect to sustain further loss of steep hill country soils and off-site damage to property.
It was necessary to restore cleared marginal land to close canopy forest, though letting it revert to scrub could also be a viable option in some cases. Spaced planting of poplar and willow could also give considerable protection and enable more sustainable pastoral farming.
On the East Coast, the Government recognised a need for regulation in 2000, and the district council agreed to introduce regulatory controls, but "the regulation is still not in place," Mr Anderton said.
He had been told the council would put a regulation in place by Christmas, but "if the council does not notify the rule the Government will have little choice but to reassess the future of the project, " he said in a statement.
The proposed law change would take effect on July 1, 2009 and require all 'target' land to be planted by 2018, or for the landowner to have a workplan in place.
The huge regional-scale soil erosion problem was a legacy of decades of poor sustainable land management practices, coupled with the effects of intense storms.
A National Party government created the East Coast Forestry Project as a replacement for the East Coast conservation forestry project that planted trees in the wake of the devastating Cyclone Bola in 1988.
It was set up as job-creation scheme that would also create a regional economic resource, and provide a remedy for privately-owned erosion-prone land while boosting job opportunities for Maori landowners.
But independent reviewers later told the government the objectives of regional development and Maori development were "not necessarily compatible".
In spite of the aims of nature conservation and combating soil erosion, some landowners were felling existing vegetation to plant pine trees. This caused conflict, particularly for Ngati Porou in the north of the district, and in 2000 the scheme was cut down to a primary goal of sustainable land management, targeting the worst 60,000ha of severely eroding land.
In the first 13 years of subsidies, 31,707ha was planted, at a rate of 5000ha a year in its peak and 1000ha in its worst year. But even after the 2000 changes only an average of 1419ha/year was planted, and only 60 per cent of that was "target land".
The current rate of planting fell well short of being able protect the remaining 56,147ha over the next 15 years: annual funding of $6.5 million for the project is due to finish in 2020.
The overriding reason for the low uptake of subsidies was landowners saw present forestry returns as too low, according to a review released by Mr Anderton.
"Today there is little interest in forestry, and the perception of forestry held by many landowners is a negative one," the report said.
In addition, there was a lack of regulation to deal with the erosion problem, "and the lack of example on the part of the Gisborne District Council in treating its own land appropriately".
"The community, cannot afford to wait for a change in the market ... there is no certainty that an increasing interest will result in treatment of the worst erosion areas".
Research had identified most of the sediment in rivers was coming from 2147 gullies, of which 495 have been planted. The remainder include 850 regarded as a "high priority".
- NZPA
