Funding to expand Bay of Plenty tree nursery
WORLD LEADING NATIVE TREE propagation technology at the heart of Ngati Whare’s plant nursery in the Bay of Plenty has been given a $5.8 million boost by the Government’s Provincial Growth Fund.
The funding, over three years, will allow Minginui Nursery to scale up production of forestry grade native seedlings to assist the Government with its one billion tree planting programme over the next 10 years.
“We need to work with nurseries and help them increase production to ensure enough seedlings – both exotics and indigenous – are available to be planted,” Forestry Minister, Shane Jones, said at a special ceremony last month to mark the announcement.
Bronco Carson, Chairman of Te Rnanga o Ngati Whare, says the money will be invested in employing and training people and expanding the two-year-old nursery so that it is able to deliver up to one million trees each year from 2021 and an estimated 7.5 million native trees within 10 years.
The Minginui nursery, which lies 90km southeast of Rotorua, currently employs nine people and plans to expand its current workforce to 90, which will be a huge help in a settlement where 80% are unemployed.
It’s already involved in growing forestgrade podocarp species – Rimu, Tatara, Matai, Kahikatea, Miro – and Kauri, and also has a large order book for Manuka, Kanuka and other pioneer species.
Minginui was planned as a forestry town by the Ministry of Works and was built in the late 1940s, but has experienced ongoing population decline since the closure of the sawmill in the late 1980s. Only about 1,300 people now live in the area, with fewer than 300 living in the town itself.
“Ngati Whare is kaitiaki (the guardian) of Whirinaki Forest,” Mr Carson says. “After our Treaty of Waitangi Settlement, we started with a plan to regenerate 640 hectares of the 55,000ha from pine to native by harvesting seeds and growing seedlings. Now Ngati Whare is at the forefront of helping develop a lucrative industry in indigenous forestry for New Zealand.”
The iwi’s forest regeneration journey has seen it make a $1.6 million investment in the nursery. The confidence to convert old Forest Service buildings, build new poly and shades houses and invest in world-best propagation and nursery technology, followed a timely visit in 2013 to Scion, the Crown Research Institute for forestry.
Ngati Whare’s has been working with Scion in the five years since to take Scion’s world leading technology to grow native podocarp trees from cuttings into the commercial space.
The native forest surrounding the Minginui Nursery contains some of the best podocarp remaining in New Zealand, particularly in the North Island, with some trees grow up to 60 metres tall.
Russell Burton, Scion General Manager Research and Investments, says the partnership with Ngati Whare allows it to prove the cuttings technology could be successful at scale inside a commercial nursery and as a result rapid mass production of viable podocarps at an industrial level is possible.
Dr Burton says the future for indigenous forestry is huge, not only in an economic sense in terms of the returns on sustainably managed and milled native timber, but also for non-timber, ecological, environmental, cultural and heritage benefits.
NZL