July 2nd programme showed a couple of old pensioners in Taranaki cutting down and milling 800 year old Rimus on the excuse they might be rotten inside and fall over anyway - how can they see that ! Bulldozing the native undergrowth to get at them also. Incredible callous greed for the quality timber ( wasn't rotten on TV when milled into planks on the spot !) - blatant rape of forest giants which would have taken another 100 years, at least to die naturally ! They should be bought to task and shamed ASAP !
Forest & Bird » Other
Country Calendar July 2nd
(14 posts)-
Posted 10 months ago #
-
You can see it here http://tvnz.co.nz/country-calendar/video
It makes me SICK!! Grrrr!
Posted 10 months ago # -
Atrocious, how is that even allowed? The shot of him bulldozing through the bush made me mad too, just so he can get to his next rimu. I didn't know it was ok because rata vines will eventually strangle and kill rimu trees - the rimu is used as a host dumbass. GREED, he obviously feels guilty since he plants 7 new ones for each logged one, so he fricken should be.
Posted 10 months ago # -
The Forests Act which empowers landowners to log these ancient rimu trees that could be 1,000years old was a National Party, the farmer party, inspired law. It has all sorts of loopholes and ways of getting around the good intention of trying to stop the loss of old growth NZ native forests. If, for example you just fell and burn the bush without using the wood, then that is OK and a number of dairy farmers on the West Coast have been doing just that over recent years. Theoretically you are only allowed to cut trees at the "sustainable yield" which in the case of 500 yr old rimu means about 1 tree out of 500 trees each year. Of course few people own 500 rimu trees. That logging rate is also not enough to keep a logging operation going. Therefore there is a loophole so they allow the "consolidation" of the cut so you take out 50 years allowable cut in 1 year....and are then supposed to wait another 50 years before doing any more felling.
The law is administered by the Ministry of Forestry, now Ministry of Agriculture and Forests and Fisheries (MAFF) and is all a bit suss!
As you could see from the Country Calendar programme, there is very big money to be made out of logging heart Rimu so there are very big financial incentives to log. These financial incentives are also very strong for illegal logging and there has been a significant amount of log poaching out of DOC reserve land.
If anyone every sees any native logging going on on private land or on any Reserve or Conservation land then take a photo, take down location details, contact F&B and also you can ring MAFF Indigenous Forests Managements Unit and ask if the people involved have a logging permit.
Probably what Country Calendar filmed was legal. However it wasn't moral. It certainly didn't need to be highlighted by Country Calendar that over many years has made an art form of TV films that celebrate man conquering NZ nature.
Posted 10 months ago # -
You are very well informed Tawaki and thanks for your explanation. Certainly wasn't moral and I sent Country Calendar a "rocket" email on the subject also - not a ' heartwarmingly rural ' story that they normally try to portrait. If folk out there speak up and monitor this type of activity, then just some of these forest monuments can be saved - it is not ok !!
Posted 10 months ago # -
What can i do? I feel so strongly about this, but not sure what I can do. Does FB have a partition I can sign? We need to stop this madness!
I bet most NZers don't realise that people are still getting permits to cut down Kauri up here in northland. Even with the kauri dieback disease killing them.I wonder how many small rimu got bulldosed in the Country Calendar story?
Posted 10 months ago # -
What can you do?
1. Write or email Country Calendar and tell them how disgusted you were by the programme. But remember they were only the messenger. The logging will go on whether it is filmed or not.
2. Write to the paper and get your anguish out there for others to share/sympathise/disagree.
3. Write to the Minister of Conservation (Kate Wilkinson) and the Minister of Forests (David Carter) and ask them to review the loopholes in the Forests Act that allow the logging of these forest giants. They will see it very much as a "private property rights" issue and the National-led Government and the Maori Party are very much into the defence of private property rights. However there are some serious problems with the Forest Act such as:
*How is it legal under the Forests Act to bulldoze native forests to expand farmland, particularly dairy land on the West Coast, when the Emissions Trading Act makes it illegal to destroy pine forests unless you pay an offset payment for the carbon storage you are destroying? Environment Minister Nick Smith might be worth asking this question of as well.
* Are there still staff in the Ministry of Forests (MAFF) policing the Indigenous Forest rules? I think this section has been drastically downsized and it is possible that they don't even visit the "Sustainable Harvest" approval places. Would you believe the forest inventory done by the old couple?. It seemed almost as though they were going out and trying to find rimus to log. Is there any monitoring of the rimu trees they plant to see if they actually grow?
* Is the Opposition Labour Party or Greens prepared to tighten up the Forest Act?
Posted 10 months ago # -
Thanks heaps Tawaki
Posted 10 months ago # -
Actually maybe we should be congratulating country calendar in a way by showing this. Its obviously upset a lot of people, and I would still have no idea that people do this if it hadn't been on tv.
Posted 10 months ago # -
I wondered if thats why they put it on tv to.
I went out for dinner last night and evryone was talking about it!
Up here in the north, our northen rata are dieing out because of possums. These tree need big rimu like this!Posted 10 months ago # -
As someone who has been involved in sustainable logging, I feel able to reply with an alturnative veiw based on some knowledge of the industry.
The planting of replacement trees is a requirement of a Sustainable forest management plan, and is intended to make sure that the speicies harvested is replaced at a similar level. Its not a guilt reaction but a common sense action.
Most Plans have a percentage of the harvest area set aside as non harvest reserve if Authoritys deem it neccesary.
Clearfelling for land clearance is irrelevant to this, and is a regional council issue, not a MAF, DOC, or management plan one.
A percentage of the harvest speices must be allowed to fall into scenescence and decay. Thats not hard to do as there is always a number of trees that are unsuitable for harvest for different reasons, mostly form.
Dead or dieing trees must be selected ahead of healthy trees, and I think if you look at the tree in question on CC, the core is deffinatly starting to rot, though that is irrelevant as a tree thats allowed to rot has no value, timber wise. They should be taken just before any significant decay takes hold. Another hundred years letting it do so is nothing in the life of a tree, but maybe something to the seedlings/forest or fragile speicies being predated on now if it means there is no funding for their protection.Plans require that effective pest control be carried out, and in my case the 1600 acres of native forest, that otherwise had no capability to earn an income, and was uncared for until I came along, suddenly financed a possum trapper who worked it, the surrounding doc land, and a further block of land owned by family, and reduced possum numbers on one site, below the level where 1080 intervention was deemed worthwhile when measured by doc. We reduced goat populations from a level of several thousand, to a few hundred, and at the time of leaving, were starting to impact on mustelid populations as well to the benefit of kiwi.
None of that could have happened if there was no revenue from the forestYes there are flaws in the system, but its pretty good, and is proven to be workable.
there has been isloated cases of theft from public land, but its actually pretty hard to steal a 30 cubic meter podocarp without makeing considerable noise or providing a visable signature of your actions.What you have to weigh up in the end, is the value of individual trees, that have had a significant part of their lifespan, against the value of provideing a way for private land owners to take an income from a resource they own, and in the process provide a level of protection for the entire forest and its ecosystem's.
I would also say that perhaps some of you are fixated on Rimu because of its size and age. There are a number of other native speicies that are harvested that don't get that attention. Tawa, Beech, Rewarewa, Matai (off the top of my head) are also very profitable, and if all speicies are combined, it can make a forest worth looking after indefinatly. Not just providing income once every 50 years, but yearly. Over my forest, the entire annual harvest was some 600 cubic meters, less than 50% of its annual replacement, and we had no hope of ever harvesting more than 60% of that.
If you sit back and say, no harvest of private forest, you have to then be prepared to let that forest degrade, or pay yourselves for its protection. Thats something i don't think we can afford. I feel its better to provide individuals with a means of protecting the forest themselves.
But if you guys have a better method, lets hear it.Posted 10 months ago # -
Interesting whanahuia. You bring up an interesting point about the logging being able to provide pest control for the area of forest. I can't say I have changed my mind though, as it still seems immoral. I have heard of something similiar in the Amazon where sustainable logging occurs and it provides work for local people.
But the question for me is how sustainable is this logging? If for one year you are cutting down 800 year old rimu, what happens the following year, you move onto 700 year old rimu. Meanwhile the trees you planted last year are still only 1 year old.. I can understand pine forests being sustainable because they take 30 years to grow to harvest. But how can cutting and then re-planting trees with a 1000 year life cycle be sustainable unless youre doing it increadibly slowly, i.e taking 1 tree every 20 years. Or you have thousand year old trees on every square metre of your land.
Making money from native forest is a challenge, expecially when most of our milled native trees are so slow growing. Manuka honey is an obvious money earner and is my idea of a good sustainable practice. Another option would be tourism and thats definitely sustainable.
Posted 10 months ago # -
Hi Ricky, if its done correctly, it should be totally sustainable. Heres a rough example based on the type of forest I had the most to deal with, Mixed Podocarp, but predominantly hardwood forest. Over an area of 600 hectares roughly, there may be some 6-700 Rimu of varying ages. The average age will be around 450-600 years. We never found a tree over 800, so I question the accuracy of the 1000 year example given as perhaps more emotive than factual. I'm not saying they don't live that long, but that average age of natural mortality is probably a lot lower. because smaller younger trees are counted, you end up with not an age based harvest, but a cubic meter based harvest. A block as described will have a yearly allowable harvest of around 25 cubic meters of Rimu, which would be between one, and one and a half trees per year. Harvesting one tree a year sounds good, but helicopter costs would be astrinomical, at 6000 bucks an hour for travel time, so it makes sense to do a number of years in one hit. Also trees don't die in order, and a virgin forest will have a large number of trees nearing senescence, so it also makes sense to remove those trees together. if you do 10, or 50 years at once, you can't go back to that forest again within that time. 10 years makes the most sense to me. thats 250 cube at a time.
Somee time in the first 200 years, there may well be a period where there is nothing suitable to mill, thats just the way it will be, but with constant replacement, there will eventually be a steady string of harvestable timber.
The real value of these plans is not with Rimu though, its the faster growing hardwood speicies such as Tawa, Hinau, Puketea etc, that have a 200 odd year turn around.
Manuka honey is indeed a great idea, but you dont get much from a mature native forest, its a better alturnative for land suitable for retirement from agriculture.
Tourism is fine if you have something to draw tourists, and ordinary native forest does not do that.
ideally I see a combination of all land uses as ways to make land profitable and sustainable.Posted 10 months ago # -
When people first arrived in New Zealand over 80% of the land was covered in native forest – and the 20% that wasn’t covered was mostly mountain tops. Now there is only about 23% of New Zealand covered with native vegetation.
Cutting down any native trees is not sustainable!!
Especially old rimu in the North Island, that are often host trees of the northen rata. This amazing tree is hurtling towords extinction in most forests due to possums.
I have been a beekeeper for 15 years and never had a rata crop. My father use to have them yearly when he was younger.
Posted 10 months ago #
Reply
You must log in to post.