The rules are kicking in very soon- just 4 weeks’ time. And they will require forestry owners to remove their slash if it’s over a certain size, and it’s not particularly large.
Anything with a diameter of more than 10 centimetres and a length of more than 2 meters has gotta go. It can't be left behind to wash down and smash up bridges and houses.
Removing it will be expensive though; there is no doubt about that.
It will be so expensive that it will make it too expensive to plant some of that steep land. Which is great, it’s what we want, because that land shouldn’t be planted in pine anyway.
I cry absolutely no tears for the forestry owners who are whingeing about this today, because they have not done their bit for their communities.
You take a look at that photo of Waikare beach halfway between Napier and Wairoa which popped up a couple of days ago.
That beach is covered in logs. None of the forestry guys have cleaned it up, it’s been that way since February 14. The logs destroyed the DoC campsite, and none of the forestry guys have cleaned it up.
These guys have made huge bucks off New Zealand- and broken our stuff as they made their money.
Now, I'm not naïve. I know that these rules will probably create as many problems as they solve. But we needed to start somewhere.
And here’s another bonus, just the threat of these rules has already stopped the sale of land for forestry. How good is that? It’s shocked that industry so badly that the sales have come to a shuddering halt.
Which is good, because fewer pines means less slash for us to clean up.
Heather du Plessis-Allan is a journalist and commentator who hosts Newstalk ZB's Drive show.
6 comments:
I agree absolutely Heather. Double thumbs up !!
If any other industry produced massive waste and just left to wash down to the local beach, town or road, would they be allowed ?
Imagine, for example, if an abattoir just dumped it's sh*t, blood and rotting guts onto the local primary school playing field ?
They used to burn it but the Greens in their infanite wisdom and superior knowledge of how industry actually works stopped them and insisted it will rot down. Idiots
With the greatest respect Heather, it helps to have a little bit of local knowledge before jumping to conclusions about who is to blame for the destruction caused to some of our most valuable farm land and supporting communities by Cyclone Gabrielle.
While not wishing to be regarded as an expert on all things pertaining to this cyclonic catastrophe, due to having lived and farmed here at the epicentre of the most serious damage (our road, inland from Tolaga Bay, was the one featured nightly on the TV network news during and immediately after with images that looked like those from an apocalypse movie) for the last 40 years, l can claim to know more than most about what happened, who is responsible and what needs to be done to prevent it happening again
This is not a new experience and is likely to happen all over again if little is done to avoid the mistakes made prior to the event.
Contrary to popular opinion, there are three entities who must share responsibility for the damage and yet only one is being called upon to account for its culpability - the forestry companies.
In fact the two missing from that list who should be shouldering most of the blame are Local and Central Government:
Local Government for failing to police the harvesting consents that allowed the slash to easily find its way into the gullies and eventually the creeks and rivers before finally ending up in the orchards, strewn across the prime river flat cropping land or through the streets of the low lying communities and infrastructure that service the forestry operations.
Central Government because of their unnecessary obsession with achieving its GHG emissions reduction targets by 2050.
Those of us who know a little bit about the forestry industry and the government’s dependence on exotic forest plantings to enable the realisation of those targets, have been telling them for years that they could easily achieve their reduction targets by limiting the planting of exotics to classes 6 and 7 marginal hill country which we have in abundance unused.
But they wouldn’t listen and as a consequence, the forest industry has been allowed to expand unrestrained over highly productive land that should be helping us survive as a nation.
So, in response to the cyclone aftermath and faced with the cleanup which will take years to fix - if ever, government reluctantly set up an inquiry, the limited investigation parameters for which were deliberately designed to avoid exposing the main culprits - Have a guess who ? and as a consequence we are now being expected to accept the findings of the inquiry and it’s recommendations as all that needs to happen for things to be back to business as usual.
Unfortunately, that is not what should happen, although the political price paid at the next election by some of those responsible will undoubtedly go some way to seeing justice being served even if it is not entirely for the right reasons.
Clive - I find it interesting that you blame local councils for not spending scarce resources ensuring forestry companies follow the rules. Perhaps it would be easier on all if the companies were prepared to just be good citizens and follow the law.
Very Good Point, Clive.
Weak governing has allowed uncontrolled plating and harvesting (with no clean up rules) of this Alien plant species that makes BIG BUCKS today, but leaves our land raped, poisoned and devastated.
Think I'm exaggerating? Just look at a hillside of pines that has been harvested.
In response to CXH
Actually, my experience sharing a common boundary with the biggest single forestry estate on the East Coast, most of it under the control of management companies, suggests that most of them do follow the rules and are good corporate citizens in a geological environment that is prone to erosion.
It is important to note that much of the debris that ended up smashing its way through the homes and across the high quality flat land is made up of fully grown trees that were never designed to be harvested but simply ended up in different locations on its way to the sea because whole hillsides of retired gullies gave way under its own waterlogged weight, sliding off the papa bedrock and into the watercourses.
Any responsible survey of the slash components that ended up on the flats or on the beaches will show that in many cases there was only a relatively small percentage of what had become commonly known as “forestry slash” .
And that is why l am trying to set the record straight as to who are the main culprits here.
Obviously, the forestry companies have some responsibility for this disaster, mainly because it originated on their land but, where it occurred, it should limited to the management systems that were not policed during harvest and p, in that context, the buck sits with the local government.
Readers would be interested to know that in an attempt to shield themselves from any blame, the government review was suggesting that the companies be individually fined by as much as $10 million dollars each for their part in the catastrophe.
Hopefully that will not be a recommendation that is part of the follow up process, but believe me when l say that - if it was, then we would likely see a mass exodus of forestry companies from the East Coast region resulting in loss of employment opportunities for most of those individual companies servicing the industry
People should know that the forestry companies don’t need to be here at all.
They have more than enough less erosion prone class 6 and 7 land throughout the country where the return on their investment is much more encouraging that that on offer here on the Coast.
So we should be encouraging them to stay in order to ensure their industry remains as an important part of the local economy.
Penalising and demonising them is the last thing we should be considering.
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