GUEST BLOG: Pat O’Dea – Slash

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Will the Hipkins administration act to ban ‘Slash’?

Forestry Slash has demolished houses, damaged bridges, covered farmland and beaches and blocked and dammed rivers making flooding worse. And Slash has killed.

Will the Hipkins administration hold the forestry companies accountable, and under urgency, pass strict enforcement regulation compelling the forestry companies to clean up their Slash, before the next big storm hits?

The authorities have known about the dangers of Slash for a long time.

Slash is not a new problem. This has all happened before.
Not on this scale, for sure But after previous Slash related events, in line with neoliberal economic theory, the government neglected to enact legislation to regulate the forestry companies to clean up their Slash.

Hands off neoliberal wisdom is that government must not act to regulate business.
And so it was with Slash.

The Hipkins administration must act immediately to ban Slash under urgency, before the next big storm hits and costs further lives.

Even the ACT Party, usually the champion of neo-liberal laissez faire hands off economic theory, are campaigning against Slash. The Labour government’s hesitancy to immediately enforce forestry companies to clean up their Slash can only give ammunition to the government’s opponents.

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January 2023;

 

Pat O’Dea is a trade unionist and human rights activist.

27 COMMENTS

  1. I’m told that slashings are able to be chipped, and even used as a sort of low-yield furnace fuel.

    Perhaps the Forest Service should be setting up a scheme to do just that.

  2. The problem is clear felling of a whole catchment in a few months by hauler draging stems across miles of frajile hillside. The slash is only part of the problem. The ground is left bare and broken with no wegitable cover to either break the flow of water or hold the surface together. The result is that the rain comes straitht off carrying with it a huge amount of soil which both slows down the flow in the waterways and greatly adds to it’s volume.
    This land I remember being planted out of steep pasture land with the idea that in forrest it would not erode as badly as in grass. And it didn’t while it was in forrest. but when that cover is gone in an entire catchment it is far more fragile than it was in grass until it has cover again. A year or two.
    The trees need to come off in steps , a few ha at a time so the worked area of land is broken up. It needs to be done in smaller operations , some here some there .
    D J S

    • Exactly David .We need to move away from this short rotation, low value, high density type of forestry., that ends in clear felling
      Tanes tree trust has been around for ages, implementing and advocating for the idea of continuous canopy forestry , using natives like totara, matai, rimu, even Kauri, and selectively harvesting high value logs by helicopter.

  3. Wasn’t the use of forestry waste to make biofuels one of the research projects being conducted at Marsden Point before the oil companies were allowed to close it down? There was also talk that the facilities, previously at Marsden Point, could have been adapted to produce such biofuel.
    Another wasted opportunity in the name of neoliberalism.
    Who owns the East Coast forests and forestry companies?

  5. I have received feedback on this post, that calling for slash to banned is like calling for the stable door to be shut after the horse has bolted. Because the Slash is probably all gone now, (washed into the rivers and out to sea by the cyclone).

    My reply to this comment: ‘If the slash doesn’t exist anymore, then nobody should have any objection to banning it.’ And it shouldn’t be a problem for the government to immediately enact a ban on Slash ever being left behind by forestry operators ever again.

    What’s the hold up?

Comments are closed.