Date: 14th January 2025
The Government is looking for partners to plant trees on Crown-owned land that has low conservation and farming value. The intended purpose is that it will contribute to climate change targets, spur economic growth through a thriving forestry and wood processing sector, and improve native biodiversity and water quality.
There was no public process to determine the level of support or provide an opportunity to comment. The Wilding Pine Network is concerned that this proposal will further exacerbate the wilding pine issue if pines are planted.
What’s being proposed?
The Government wants to explore partnership opportunities to afforest (plant native or exotic trees) or
promote native forest regeneration on Crown-owned land (excluding National Parks) which has low
farming value and low conservation value.
The intent is to better use land of low farming value and low conservation value and protect land with high farming and high conservation value. However, when this is related to pines and particularly those that wild, this seems a bit odd when we have the experience from the national wilding control programme and particularly sites such as the Branch Leatham where pines were planted for erosion control and are now a significant wilding issue destroying conservation and farming land. In the right conditions seed can move many kilometres and once wilding forests establish from that seed, they then expand the distance that wilding seed can spread. Determining low value conservation land is also very subjective and has not been explained in any detail in the documentation that is available.
Branch Leatham – Marlborough – October 2024
A high-level map of indicative land is shown below. This shows only land administered by the Department
of Conservation and Land Information New Zealand and is mostly in the South Island. It is not a map that provides enough detail on exactly where sites should be. Ideally these should be listed to make it easier to determine actual sites. If they are determined to be of low conservation value information should also be provided on how they were determined to be of low conservation value and what conservation values do exist.
The government has released a Request for Information Overview document which is very light on detail and intended solely for parties who may be interested in partnering.
Submissions are requested by 5pm on 28th February. The RFI is to gauge interest in the proposal and understand what would make afforesting Crown-owned land an attractive and viable opportunity. They would like to hear views on:
opportunities for afforestation
conditions and contractual arrangements that would enable you to undertake afforestation
barriers to afforestation and what government could do to help overcome these.
A good article summarizing the scheme is in Farmers Weekly: https://www.farmersweekly.co.nz/news/thumbs-down-for-high-country-tree-plans/
WPN suggests that if this registers concern with you that you read the information in the RFI link above and email a response to the listed email address RFI@mpi.govt.nz. We will be submitting such a response and will make it available as a news story after submissions close. If you would like to send comment for us to include in our response, please email jo@wildingpinenetwork.org.nz by 14th February.
Upper reaches of the Branch Leatham how it should look – free of wilding pines October 2024.
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