Horizons co-ordinates next four years of central North Island pine pulling

Wilding pines are eradicated on a Rotorua mountain. Photo / Daily Post

Horizons Regional Council will again lead wilding conifer control in the central North Island - and this year have $329,000 from Government to clear pest trees from its territory.

The Government is putting $100 million into wilding conifer clearing, to provide jobs in response to Covid-19. For the past few years Horizons' pest plant co-ordinator Craig Davey has been dividing spending across the Horizons, Waikato and Hawke's Bay regions, for the councils and also the Department of Conservation.

Horizons has managed funding for wilding conifer control in the central North Island since the 1980s.

"We know how to do this well. We want to continue to finish the job," Davey told Horizons councillors at their September 22 meeting.

Four species of conifer, all pines, have become a problem across about 17 per cent of the Horizons Region, mostly in the western Ruahine Range area.

They have the "transformational" potential to blanket hills in dense forest within a decade.

Good progress has been in eradicating them. The conifers are becoming sparse and the most efficient way to find and kill them uses helicopters for transport.

Helicopters will increase the council's greenhouse gas emissions, the report said, but they are the most efficient way to do the job.

It's a "scalpel-type approach" that doesn't need large crews, Davey said.

Horizons will get $329,000 in the first year of the four-year programme, and supplement that with $109,500 from rates - increasing its annual spend on conifer eradication by 41 per cent.

Spending for the following years has not been set. Horizons' natural resources and partnerships manager Jon Roygard said it will be an "adaptive" programme, depending on the infestations that are found.