Logging crews from outside Canterbury will help with the clean-up and wood recovery in forests left shattered in New Zealand from last week’s wind storm. Source: Radio New Zealand
Plantation owners are still assessing the damage.
But forestry consultant Allan Laurie said it’s the worst he’s seen in his 26 years in the industry. However, he said it’s too early to put an estimate on the cost of the damage.
Laurie said his company has already made arrangements to bring extra logging contractors in from Southland and Nelson. But he estimates at least four or five more crews would be needed just to handle the clean up in the plantations the company manages.
Processing and shipping would also need to be re-organised.
Canterbury forest owners are up against the clock as they face the huge task of recovering a massive amount of wind-blown wood from their plantations in the next few months.
The industry is still assessing the cost of the wind storm that left plantations, wood lots and shelter belts in tatters throughout the region.
Laurie said hundreds of thousands of tonnes of wood had been felled or, according to one estimate, the equivalent of up to five years’ harvest.
Forest owners would have to move fast to recover the wood before it started to deteriorate, he said.
“For the domestic market, where the buyers demand that the wood is free of sap stain … we’ve got only probably two to three months to get that wood into them in a non contaminated state,” Laurie said.
“But the export scene is a little bit easier. The Chinese, which is the dominant market for Canterbury, they’re not quite so concerned about sap stain because the timber is mostly used in form work – holding up concrete and so forth.
“So… we may have up to 12 months to recover volume where it’s going to export.”
The worst damage occured in the wider Canterbury region, where shelter belts have been flattened and large areas of commercial plantation ruined.
Blakely Pacific South Island regional manager Andrew Cocking said that companies are surveying the damage before starting clean up and wood salvaging operations.
He said that some plantations are severely damaged, along with some very old established trees, such as oak trees. Any mature pines older than 22 years could be harvested as logs.
Cocking said using a helicopter was the best way to assess where the worst damage is and then decide a program of harvesting or what changes are needed.
