10 December 2012
The report of a forestry reference group set up by the Gisborne District Council to look at slash in waterways says no changes are needed in the district plan for plantation forestry at present. The council's environment and policy committee has adopted a number of recommendations made by the forestry reference group to reduce the problems of slash.These include asking the Eastland Wood Council to encourage its members to be “good neighbours” — instructing staff to work with the industry to collate regional best practice environmental guidelines and instructing staff to initiate enforcement in circumstances where non-compliance is detected, to deter repeat incidents.
The committee wants staff to use its membership of the proposed plantation forestry national standard working party to seek provisions that will enable efficient and effective management of the downstream adverse effects of harvesting.
A report from environmental services manager Trevor Freeman and soil conservation team leader Kerry Hudson said there was no doubt that soil conservation had been an important soil conservation tool in this district, beginning with large scale planting at Mangatu Forest in the early 1960s.
The Government pursued new plantings on lands considered to be unproductive. The end result of that was that the forests harvested today were concentrated on the most erosion- prone lands in the district and the steepest, which naturally had thin or skeletal soils.
Plantation forestry had become an important industry in its own right, even though that was not always considered as the main aim at the time of planting.
It was important that the forest industry noted community expectations that appropriate standards of operational and environmental management were met. The group findings say most concerns had been in regard to woody debris slash, as this had been very publicly, rightly or wrongly, attributed to forests.
The report says some woody debris is acceptable in waterways but only limited quantities, more in keeping with “natural” forests. There are management solutions to address woody debris, such as avoiding accumulations at landing edges, riparian setbacks, temporarily leaving some trees on alluvial terraces standing, and debris-catching structures.
“Some in the forest industry need to lift their game, take some responsibility and ensure the measures that are available are applied,” the report says.
Eastland Wood Council chairman Iain McInnes said the industry now had something to work towards.
Source: Story by John Jones, Gisborne Herald. To read the full story >>