Twenty per cent of the new forest planted in New Zealand last year was the result of Horizons Regional Council’s Sustainable Land Use Initiative. Source: The New Zealand Herald
The initiative (SLUI) had an exceptional 2012-13 year according to Horizons’ environmental land manager Grant Cooper.
And its previous year was also good – accounting for 11% of new forest planting throughout the country.
The numbers are highlights from Horizons’ twice-yearly report to the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) in New Zealand, which provides about $1.5 million funding a year toward SLUI from its Hill Country Erosion Fund.
SLUI is seven years old, and its aim is to keep soil on erosion-prone hills and out of waterways. Horizons provides plans to farmers who want to be part of it, and the plans recommend work that will prevent erosion without making a big hole in farm income.
When work is done, the cost is shared between the council, the landowner and government.
In the 2012-13 year, SLUI did twice as much work on the ground as it had targeted. There are now 17,000 hectares of work completed, and Cooper said the initiative could run for another 15 years.
In 2012-13 nearly 3500 hectares of forest was planted, with all the trees destined to be harvested.
Most were pines, which are cheap to plant and provide the best value for ratepayers and government. Species such as redwoods and cypress are planted if they are the only way to make the forestry economic.
Cooper said farmers could be reluctant to lose income from land, but often changed their minds when confronted by hillsides reverting to gorse and feeding few stock.
“If it’s on erosion-prone land we will put a good amount of money into the fencing of those blocks.”
Some farmers were opting for “managed retirement”, where they stopped putting fertiliser on areas and grazed only with sheep. The result was land gradually reverting to forest.
One possible economic benefit from allowing scrub to grow into forest was carbon credits. Another was manuka honey.
“It’s still in its infancy but there are people now offering reasonable money for that sort of thing.”
As well as full tree cover options, 18,700 poplar poles were space-planted on eroding hillsides during the year.
The SLUI is not likely to be as productive in the next few years. The Government has stopped funding forestry with its Afforestation Grant Scheme, and changes it has made to the Emissions Trading Scheme have reduced the value of carbon credits.
The result of the double whammy is that only 1000 hectares of new forest planting is planned for the coming year, a big drop from 3500 hectares. It could be a while before planting increases too, because forestry needs forward planning.
“You just can’t turn forestry on and off like that. It has 12 to 18-month lead times, to order seedlings from nurseries.”
Horizons will now have to find other sources of forestry funding. In the meantime, Cooper said it was trying to plant more poplar poles.
