To Forestry Colleagues on the Net.
It is always interesting to read about the way that others see
what you have done and I congratulate the authors on a useful summary of
the changes in forestry in New Zealand over the last 10 years. There are
of course a few major issues that have been misrepresented and I would
like to put them right here in case readers get the wrong idea.
1) The authors near the end do explain that it is the forest plantation
crop and not the land that has been privatised, but the impression one
gets at the beginning is about privatising the land, which is in fact
just being leased.
2) The land area of NZ is 27 million ha (or c. 67.5 million acres
for the benefit of US readers) of which 6.2 million ha (c. 67.5 million
acres) is in indigenous forest (5.1 million ha = c. 12.7 million acres under
the stewardship of the Department of Conservation). That is 23 % of NZ's
total land area is in indigenous forest. The current area of plantations
( about 90% radiata pine ) is approx. 1.4 million ha (c. 3.5 million
acres and c. 5% of the total land area).
3) During the life of the NZ Forest Service from 1920 to 1887,
the indigenous forest AREA stayed about the same at 6 million ha, while
the plantation resource grew from hardly any to today's 1.4 M ha and
supplies 98% of this country's wood needs plus a healthy and growing
surplus for export.
4) Even as late as 1988 the government was still proclaiming the need
for a change in forest policy to retain the AREA of indigenous forest,
when their own Ministry's official figures showed that such a goal had
been achieved over the last 70 years. The issue should have been
maintenance or enhancement of the QUALITY not areal quantity of the
resource.
5) But the environmental lobby persuaded the politicians and the
public that the indigenous forests could be best left unmanaged and out
of the hands of an organisation like the Forest Service that identified
with multiple objectives, albeit with a predominant use approach. The
environmentalists jumped into an unholy alliance with the NZ Treasury,
which advises on use of the nation's finances and which rubbed its hands
with glee at not having to spend anything on the Department of
Conservation's forests. The result has been, largely because of a lack
of people and money within the Department of Conservation for the control of
introduced animals, a threat to maintaining the area of indigenous
forest and a marked decline in the quality of the indigenous forests.
This deterioration in the indigenous forests because of stupid
ideology that separates forest use on the basis of single purposes should be
of far greater concern than what has or has not happened to the
plantation forests.
6) In 1993 the Forests Act of 1949 was much amended to allow
sustainable harvests from the 1.1 M ha of indigenous forests not under
control of the Department of Conservation. These owners are being
encouraged, therefore, to recognise the need for revenue from the forest in
order to preserve it. But you don't hear much about this as it is
politically sensitive. Nevertheless, NZ would be in breach of the Rio
Declaration and the Montreal Process, to both of which it is a signatory,
if it did not. Incidentally, there is still a part of the State-owned
indigenous forest resource (c. 100 000 ha), which is being managed for
timber production, but that is another issue.
These are a few of the major impressions of NZ forestry that
needed to be commented on if some aspects of the otherwise useful US
article on NZ forestry were not to be misconstrued. Other views can be
sought from various publications by a colleague, Ted Bilek at the
University of Canterbury and elaboration of my own views in various
international as well as NZ publications the last few years.
A. Graham D. Whyte
P.O. Box 12297
CHRISTCHURCH
New Zealand
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