One Billion…wilding pines?
Friday, 26 June 2020
Is this simply the dumbest waste of Government money to be spent in New Zealand?
The Government has committed $100m dollars to tackle wilding pines infestations during the next four years but under the One Billion Trees Fund, it's also paying for the invasive species to be planted in the first place.
In Southland, a trust that has worked hard to eradicate wilding pines has written to Government ministers asking why they allow, under the fund, the planting of wilding species.
The Mid Dome Wilding Pine Trust has spent more than $10m clearing wilding contorta pines from northern Southland since 2007.
Trust spokesperson Ali Ballantyne-Timms in an email to Conservation Minister Eugenie Sage, Agriculture Minister Damien O'Connor and Forestry Minister Shane Jones, says she's ''disheartened that your ministries on one hand continue to support a very successful multi-million national wilding control programme whilst allowing a failure of policy, which will result in costly wilding spread to existing areas where wilding control work has and is being undertaken and also opening up new vulnerable areas to the same spread risk.''
**READ MORE:
* Pines versus natives: Tree schemes risk sacrificing native bush
* One Billion Trees: Labour challenge for the forestry industry
**
A wilding pine or conifer is one that has grown from a seed from which has not been planted. They can spread from existing plantations, farm shelter belts of from other wildings.
The goal of the One Billion Trees Programme is to increase tree planting across New Zealand for forestry blocks or for carbon farming.
Jones replied to the Southland trust saying: ''the Government recognises that ongoing work is needed to better understand and improve the control of wilding conifers. The Year One Review of the National Environmental Standard for Plantation Forestry is looking at the controls over wilding conifers within the NES-PF.
'My Te Uru Rākau officials are committed to ensuring that grants fund the right tree in the right place. All grants are subject to a technical forestry assessment which includes a wilding risk check.''
Stuff also approached the three ministers, asking why the programme allowed for the planting of wilding species.
All three referred comment to Te Uru Rākau Forestry New Zealand, which says wilding tree species can be planted under the Billion Trees Scheme and there are safeguards in place to protect the environment from their spread.
Te Uru Rākau Forestry New Zealand deputy director general Julie Collins said the fund already required people who were applying for grants for exotic forests to show that there was a low risk of wilding spread.
Additionally, the review of the National Environmental Standard for Plantation Forestry (NES-PF) is considering new controls over wilding pines and will make a number of recommendations next month.
And foresters are required to first assess new plantations under the NES-PF using the wilding spread risk calculator.
Where wilding risk is considered high, the applicant is required to seek a resource consent.
The New Zealand forest industry is based on sustainable plantations of predominantly Pinus radiata, commonly known as radiata pine, Monterey pine or New Zealand pine. Douglas-fir and various cypress and eucalypt species are also grown for timber.
The wildingconifers.org quick identification guide lists Douglas firs as the most common wilding fir and in Southland the Douglas firs are listed on Environment Southland's Regional Pest Management Plan.