Conservation comment: Slips follow poor land use

Flaxes planted on a hillside.

I was a design and sales engineer from the mid '60s until 1985, when Sir Robert Muldoon destroyed engineering as we know it in New Zealand. I then bought a reverted backblocks farm in Waverley where I cleared the scrub and mānuka regrowth, to try my hand at farming.

In 2001 I sold the farm in Waverley and retired with my wife on to our newly purchased lifestyle block here in Aramoho.

My 33 years of hard hill-country farming experience in our Whanganui region has taught me rules of survival in this country. Break these rules and the land slips away into the gullies, threatening life and meaning a 100-year wait for the topsoil to regenerate.

In our first 10 years here we were seriously threatened by land slips, causing loss of pasture and about two acres (0.8ha) of native forest that slipped down to our Roberts Ave boundary with the mud flowing on to the Whanganui River.

Another major slip on New Year's Day 2012, saw 2m of topsoil from the hill above us avalanche over our property. It shifted our access road 50m down into a gully, buried under 3000 tonnes of yellow mud and clay. My wife had passed in the car 20 minutes before. Other smaller slips on my eastern boundary took out most of my boundary fence, three years running during winter storms.

I believe the main cause of all these slips were bad decisions by early authorities, who bulldozed tracks up the hillsides, and the removal of exotic pine trees (roots rotting and inducing storm water deep into the steep face).

By fencing off the fragile paddocks and careful use of native plants like flax with willows planted in strategic spots and control of exotic pests like stray goats, possums and other vermin, we have averted disasters over the past five years (despite the unusually serious storms of the past three years).

I still have serious problems with pine trees, feral goats and Japanese honeysuckle, but these are not life-threatening.

All of the above lessons were just common sense for the old-time farmers who owned their own 150ha farms and kept erosion at bay.

The last National Government, however, seems to have changed New Zealand farm and forestry ownership into large corporations (of mostly overseas owners) who just want maximum dollar returns with no care at all for the environment. I believe the so-called "spray and pray" method of farming is gambling with nature and has no place in New Zealand or anywhere else.

That is why I was shocked to read that approval by Horizons of "spray and pray" techniques could be granted to farmers in our hill country.

Even if the hills survived the spray, and the feed crops grew, feeding stock on these hills in winter would cause massive erosion. We have seen tragic scenes overseas of whole towns buried by moving hillsides.

I believe we could be a town in the headlines if we accept this crazy decision.

But to end on a happy note, I believe the new Coalition Government are making all the right noises to fix these problems - if they can survive greedy world corporations.