Kiwi forests under threat
Foreign log buyers are stripping New Zealand timber faster than we can regrow it, leading to fears of ‘long-term disaster’. By Catherine Harris.
‘ You’ve got overseas buyers from India, China and I think the Middle East as well, flying into New Zealand, grabbing a chartered flight from Ardmore, and flying over all the forests. ’ BRIAN STANLEY
JOBS and environmental sustainability are under threat from foreign log buyers, who are flying over New Zealand forests and offering struggling landowners cash to buy immature trees.
That’s the claim of saw millers and wood industry organisations, who say they now have grave concerns about the country’s longterm log supplies.
Brian Stanley of The Wood Council, said he was getting reports from Northland of sales of logs as young as 18-years-old, when the trees should ideally be left to grow for another 10 years.
‘‘You’ve got overseas buyers from India, China and I think the Middle East as well, flying into New Zealand, grabbing a chartered flight from Ardmore, and flying over all the forests.
‘‘It’s all the farmers’ woodlots. They’ll GPS those and then land at Whangarei, pick up a rental car with a wad of cash, and just go around buying them up.’’
The practice seems to be worst in Northland, but there are reports of the same thing happening in Southland and Canterbury.
And Northland saw millers in particular fear logging could drop off massively in five years’ time, if immature log exports continue.
Stanley added: ‘‘There’s no law against it. The farmer or whoever owns the trees can do what he likes with them.
‘‘What we’re saying is they should probably get some professional advice on the basis that if they took them out to age 28, they would probably get a better value proposition.’’
In Otago, Roger Stuart of Stuart Timber said he was also hearing reports of exporters encouraging people to cut the trees at 22 to 24 years of age and it was hard for people who had put in a forest for their retirement to turn it down.
Industry players said it was unlikely the young logs are being used for construction, although they say there are no controls once they leave New Zealand shores.
Neil Geerkens, general manager of Northland Forest Managers, said trees cut down before their prime would not be there when the industry expected them. RICHARD KEAN
The speed at which wood is being felled in Northland was now so great that Mark Hansen of Northland’s Rosvall Sawmill predicts mills will close and wants the Government to step in.
‘‘It’s going to cause massive problems as soon as 2021. It’s a five-minute feast for a long-term disaster, I’d say. It’s all legal, you can’t legally stop it but I’m saying why can’t we change the laws’?’’
Shane Horan, of Northland’s Waipapa Pine agrees.
‘‘You’ve got to slow it down and have strategic sustainable harvesting,’’ he said.
‘‘You’ve got to encourage replanting... You can’t be there for a few years and just wait on the side till the next lot grows and then come back in five years when you’re all paying off your capital investments.
‘‘So that affects everybody, from your harvesters to your transporters, the whole lot. Because they’ve got to keep everybody employed.’’
However, the minister in charge of forestry issues, Jo Goodhew, said the Government would not intervene in what were essentially commercial decisions by private companies. She also said a decline in log volumes over the next decade in Northland had been expected for some time.