As trees go, radiata pine is a quick cash crop. But it is also a bad bet that we are doubling down on when we should be planting new native forests to tackle the climate emergency
Ian Brennan came to drystock farming in 2006 after 22 years as a computer systems analyst. He began experimenting with native plantings, mostly totara, and aims to have all seven gullies on the farm returned to native forest cover by the time he retires. As a member of Tane's Tree Trust, he offers farm tours to discuss integration of forestry on marginal land.
After all, when you go for a walk, do you head into a native forest or a radiata pine plantation?
It’s an easy choice. The first is diverse, multi-coloured, teeming with life and uplifting. The second is uniform, monotone, lacking in life and rather gloomy. Even if you own the plantation you’re most likely to visit just to check on your timber investment.
The all-of-forest benefits of natives far outweigh those of radiata pine. They include rich biodiversity, abundant ecosystem services, carbon capture, greater resilience to climate change, many natural foods, materials and resources including valuable varieties of timber, recreational opportunities, and landscape and cultural values.
Radiata pines, however, have little to offer beyond timber, carbon storage and soil erosion control. Worse, the timber hasn’t made us rich economically, let alone in environmental, cultural and social terms. A distressingly high proportion of the harvest is exported as logs; and far too much of it ends up in one-off, low value uses such as freight pallets.
Yet, for the last century or more we have poured the vast majority of our forestry investment, policy and efforts into the science, planting, growing, harvesting and processing of radiata pine. We’ve largely ignored other species, particularly natives, for a simple reason: radiata pine is a quick cash crop, as trees go.
Worse, we’re doubling down on this bad bet. Rising carbon prices and inadequate climate and land use policies are driving a surge in radiata plantings. It’s yet another quick fix which will cause serious long term damage to our ecosystems, economy and society.
The dangers of doing so have been well-evidenced and argued by many experts such as the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment and the Climate Change Commission. To help reduce the dominance of radiata, the latter has proposed we plant 300,000 ha of new native forests by 2035 to help us tackle the climate crisis.
But our far bigger and better opportunity is to plant between 1million and 2m ha of natives, as Pure Advantage, a sustainability NGO, and Tāne’s Tree Trust advocate in their O Tātou Ngāhere project launched on Thursday.
A native tree revolution
“We need a revolution in the way we think and act regarding native forests,” says Sir Stephen Tindall, a founder and trustee of Pure Advantage. “We must find ways to engage young people and encourage private land-owners to plant and regenerate native trees – on farms, on marginal land, on lifestyle blocks, through civic partnerships and in our urban environments.
“In the process we’ll unlock a myriad of new opportunities and benefits, from sustainable tourism and timber harvesting, to restoring the mauri of our land and replenishing our biodiversity. This programme of work is about integrating native forest into our whenua for the benefit of all.”
At the heart of this is a profound shift in perspective and strategy: from radiata pine as a tool of climate mitigation with some timber benefits on the side, to native forests as a source of climate mitigation and adaptation thanks to the wide ecological, economic and cultural benefits they deliver.
The project, which is hosted on the Pure Advantage website, explores these opportunities in some 40 articles by experts in all the relevant fields, plus a short documentary that draws on their deep knowledge. We’ll run a small selection of the articles on our Newsroom website next week.
The work is arranged in four parts: Unlocking the narrative of native forests; Near-to-nature forestry; The forest economy; and The way forward. It is the most compelling, most comprehensive case made to date for a big expansion of native forests. The project is working on further resources such as webinars, so it’s worth signing up for its email updates.
The biggest challenge of all is to ensure we fully value the all-of-forest benefits of natives, and then to create some economic mechanisms to reward land owners – both private and public – for planting natives. Taking this integrated approach is crucial. If we make narrow decisions on just the known carbon sequestration and timber value of radiata pine we will continue to make seriously sub-optimal decisions.
There is already plenty of evidence of the benefits. Three examples cited by the project are New Zealand’s biodiversity strategy, Te Mana o te Taiao; the August 2020 report Native Forests: Resetting the Balance, from The Aotearoa Circle, an organisation of senior business and government leaders who are working to put natural capital at the heart of our economy; and Auckland Council’s Urban Ngāhere (Forest) Strategy released in 2019.
The full range of benefits that native trees give us is shown in this graphic from The Aotearoa Circle’s report:
And the benefits of natives to urban environments is shown in this graphic from the Auckland Council strategy:
Increasing urban tree cover is a substantial challenge. In Auckland, for example, the northern and western parts of the city have on average better than 50 percent cover; but southern parts of the city such as Māngere and Ōtāhuhu have barely 8 percent cover. Moreover, changes to the RMA in 2012 led to the removal in 2015 of the city’s blanket protection of trees, resulting in the loss of many native and exotic trees.
Nature-based solutions
The project also advocates for the adoption here of better forest management practices well-established in some countries overseas. Our current practice of clear-cutting radiata pine plantations causes hard-to-manage problems such as soil erosion, not to mention bleak landscapes until replacement plantings mature.
But “close-to-nature” management, for example, allows for selective logging which keeps a forest’s canopy and ecosystem intact. This has been the standard practice in Germany, for example, for generations.
As for the harvest value of natives, we know many species are superior to radiata pine in their qualities and visual appeal. Totara, for example, is naturally resistant to decay which made it the fencepost of choice in generations past when supplies were abundant. In contrast the radiata pine posts of today need chemical treatment to prevent rot.
But research into the commercial qualities and economic value of natives has had minimal to date. The Totara Industry Pilot run by Tāne’s Tree Trust is showing very promising results but rightly the project is calling for a big increase in research and development.
This powerful advocacy of native forests by Pure Advantage and the Trust shows us the substantial benefits of nature-based solutions to the climate crisis. Globally, such solutions are gaining rapid traction, as I described in this column in February.
They are doing so because they play a crucial role that industrial technologies such as renewable energy and electric vehicles can’t – they are helping restore the vitality and resilience of the living systems on which we depend for our survival.
Since we so strongly define ourselves as a nation by the great wealth of our distinctive land, water, environment and natural resources, we must live up to that privilege and responsibility by restoring our native forests to their right and abundant role in the health of the planet.
