Tairāwhiti environmental group hails court decision against forest company

A court ruling says China Forestry Group NZ must cease the discharge of woody debris and sediment. Photo / Duncan Brown

By RNZ

A Tairāwhiti environmental group is hailing an Environment Court decision against a Chinese-owned forest company as a significant event.

For years, forest waste - slash - has flowed off harvest sites during storms, damaging farmland and wiping out roads and bridges.

Last month Mana Taiao Tairāwhiti and the Gisborne District Council took action in the Environment Court at Auckland against China Forestry Group NZ and management company Wood Marketing Services for their operation in the Kānuka Forest in the Upper Waimata River catchment.

The court ruling released on Friday said the company must cease the discharge of woody debris and sediment.

Other requirements relate to slash removal and stabilisation works, water controls, slash catchers monitoring and maintenance, and reporting.

And a new order relates to the retirement of part of the forest.

The ruling said: “All involved in this proceeding agree the problems that have occurred in recent years are unacceptable”.

Some of the work is to be carried out by the end of the year, with the ruling saying slashcatchers and woody debris-catching devices must be installed by August 2025.

At the hearing, Mana Taiao Tairāwhiti spokesman Manu Caddie said this showed there were real repercussions for bad land management and that was a clear signal to all forest companies that they needed to improve harvest practices.

“It sets a precedent. It shows that the court is taking these matters very seriously and hopefully companies that thought they could get away with poor practices will realise that there’s going to be no sympathy from the courts who are expecting them to clean up their mess before they leave the site.”

Caddie said unfortunately past successful prosecutions against forestry companies had not always resulted in improved harvesting practices. However, the regulator was now doing a good job of monitoring and compliance with the council taking issues more seriously than previously.

The court outlined a concern that, just before the hearing started, a director of China Forestry Group, Yuxia Sun, resigned from the role he had held since 2018, (the other directors are based in China) and had been named as a respondent in the case brought by Gisborne District Council.

A new director Yihang Liu was appointed in May but was not subject to the orders because he was not party to the proceeding.

Caddie said given that 90% of the land in Tairāwhiti was steep and erodable, plantation forestry did not have a future in Tairāwhiti, but forest companies needed help to transition to a different land use - in particular, permanent native forest.

He said they needed help to do this and the government could issue biodiversity credits or tweak the Emissions Trading Scheme so there was more incentive to transition out of pines to native trees.

- RNZ