Forest Owners Say Native Trees Are Nice But Won’t Solve The Climate Emergency
The Forest Owners Association says the just released Emissions Reduction Plan is a welcome and unprecedented blueprint for reducing New Zealand’s gross emissions.
But the Association is warning that a huge emphasis in the ERP on planting native trees ignores how urgent it is to deal with the climate change crisis.
The Forest Owners Association President, Grant Dodson, says he, and just about every other New Zealander, are fans of native trees and would like to see more of them planted.
“They are our original land cover. Indigenous trees are deeply imbedded in our culture. Species, such as rimu, kauri and pūriri are fantastic trees and produce great timber and wood.”
“But native trees are not capable of reducing our net emissions in any substantial degree this side of next century. They grow too slowly.”
“In many cases, expectations of carbon sequestration from natives are overstated in the current official data tables. That makes the problem worse.”
“It’s a fact of life that exotics, such as pines or eucalypts, do a much faster job of locking up atmospheric carbon. That’s why the Climate Change Commission last year budgeted another 380,000 hectares of additional exotic planting by 2035.”
“Native trees are a decoration in climate change efficiency terms. A great decoration to be true. But a decoration nonetheless. In fighting climate change we need tools – not decorations.”
“We could plant enough huge areas to get some carbon volumes from native trees earlier than the year 2100. But I’m sure farmers wouldn’t like millions of hectares of farmland going into kowhai or tutu.”
“It’s also hugely expensive and difficult to establish forests of mixed native trees. Browsers, such as possums eat them. Weeds, such as old man’s beard, grow all over them.
“Future planting is always going to be a mix of both native and exotic. Native trees have their place. But there is a huge income opportunity for farmers from fast growing exotic trees. There are very compelling economic benefits to New Zealand if we diversify farm revenues this way,” Grant Dodson says.
“We especially welcome the government’s plan to expand forestry extension services and invest in bioenergy. But we seriously caution the focus on native plantings as a way to help solve the climate emergency.”
A predictable response from the Forest Owners Association. As the foreign owners of exotic (non-native) forests in New Zealand they can be expected to show careful respect to local sentiment which favors restoration of native forests, while insisting that their own model is far more effective.
In fact, their model has contributed massively to the problem of global warming and climate change. In the past forty years they have moved from medium rotation length crops to energy intensive short rotation crops with a lower average mass of carbon sequestered per hectare. They removed the forestry villages and their permanent workforce in favor of contractors who commute to the forest from large towns and cities, and they severely curtailed local processing in favor of log exports and the import of processed product.
Any of our people who want to do something about climate change should seize these forests from their present owners, place them in collective ownership, management and operation, restore the forestry villages, reintroduce medium to long rotation silvicultural regimes, and establish at least 10% of the total production forest area in indigenous timber species.
Kia ora Ben
Since exotic production forestry is profitable in its own right, why would you want to subsidize it?
Indigenous reforestation is a different kettle of fish of course. As you say, it is difficult, labour intensive, and therefore expensive.
But we should not be dissuaded by those difficulties. Sure, feral “wallabies, pigs, goats and deer” (and I would add possums and feral cattle) need to be effectively suppressed in order to enable effective indigenous reforestation, but eliminating feral browsing animals will itself contribute massively to reducing net greenhouse gas emissions, so that task needs to be on the climate change agenda in any case.
The productivity of native forests is lower than that of the leading exotic species. For example the mean annual increment of kauri plantations ranges between 10 and 20 m3/ha.yr whereas radiata pine would range between 25 and 40 m3/ha.yr on comparable sites. So we are talking about significant differences rather than “order of magnitude” differences.
I think most of those involved in indigenous reforestation would see the best prospect as being totara following a manuka nurse crop, which would generate early revenues from manuka honey production. From my experience totara is an easy species to raise from seed and plant out. It is not particularly susceptible to animal or insect browsing or disease and tolerates a wide range of soil and climate types. Mean annual increment would be comparable to kauri. The timber is of high quality, naturally durable for the heartwood, stable and easily worked. Standing volumes at the end of an 80-120 year rotation would be higher than for a typical radiata pine plantation, which is more relevant to long term climate change mitigation than productivity (mean annual increment).
I have recently put in experimental plantings of most indigenous timber species and so am well aware of the difficulties involved in their silviculture, but remain convinced of the potential. I have also planted some Tasmanian blackwood which are growing much faster and with good form (contrary to the experience of many New Zealand foresters who try to manage blackwood the same way that they would radiata) and so I am also aware of the potential for exotic species other than radiata pine.
By the way I receive no direct government subsidy for my work, no carbon credits or anything like that.
and the things we(humanity) need now had to have been built decades ago yet are left to later generations to figure out and deal with.