Wild about wilding pines
The Southland District Council has granted consent for an invasive tree species to be planted on a high country station.
They’re considered an environmentalists’ nightmare.
Some groups work tirelessly to remove invasive wilding trees from the high country, but others now have resource consent to plant them.
The Mid Dome Wilding Trees Charitable Trust, which has spent thousands of hours clearing wilding pines from other sites, is dismayed that the Southland District Council has granted a nonnotified consent, with conditions, to Mataura Valley Station, near Kingston, to be planted out mainly in Douglas fir.
The trust was now seeking advice from Government ministers.
And while the consent has been issued, some of the trees being planted are listed on Environment Southland’s Regional Pest Management Plan.
A wilding pine or conifer like the Douglas fir is one that has grown from a seed from which has not been planted, but had been dropped from a cone or been blown by the wind where it lands, germinates and grows in a place it was not wanted.
They can spread from existing plantations, farm shelter belts of from other wildings that have grown and reached an age when they too have cloned and spread seed.
The wildingconifers.org quick identification guide lists Douglas firs as the most common wilding fir.
Historically the Mataura Valley Station’s rolling tussock covered
‘‘There are definitely no plans to plant trees there in the next while. We have not bought tree stock or got planters.’’ Graham Hand
hills and river flats have been sheep and beef grazing land. The station underwent tenure review in 2002 resulting in 4352 hectares remaining in the station.
The station is owned by Mataura-Chimneys Limited. The Companies Office lists its directors as Philipp Daniel Haas, and Graham Arthur Hand.
It is not known whether the resource consent for the tree means the station will be used for forestry or for carbon farming.
Hand said the company had done everything the council had asked it to do, but there were no plans to plant trees on the station ‘‘in the next while’’.
‘‘There are definitely no plans to plant trees there in the next while. We have not bought tree stock or got planters,’’ he said.
The company was still grazing stock on the land.
When asked if the intent of the resource consent was for forestry or carbon farming, Hand declined to comment further.
When the Wilding Pines Trust’s concerns about the potential spread of trees was put to Hand by The Southland Times, he replied: It had done everything requested by the council.
Haas was unable to be contacted for comment.
In February, commercial tree grower Graham Dodds was granted a resource consent by the council, subject to conditions, to plant more than 3000 hectares of the high country station out in trees. Of that area, more than 2300 hectares will be planted out in Douglas fir, hybrid pines and pinus radiata.
Dodds referred all comment to his agent, Independent Forest Services.
Any concerns about the planting of Douglas firs on the station had been dealt with in the consent, Dodds said.
Independent Forest Services Southland regional manager Anton Ridley declined to comment.
The district council’s resource consent decision says ‘the objective of the plantation is to provide a commercially viable plantation that is actively managed to enhance biodiversity, produce a valuable renewable timber resource, accumulate and store carbon and increase socioeconomic benefits for the Southland region.’
The consent has amended the original planting plan to maximise the use of the land but reduce the potential for wilding tree spread.
Southland District Council resource consent manager Marcus Roy said the majority of the plantation was a permitted activity, with no consent required under the national regulation [the national environmental standard for plantation forestry].
This national regulation overrides the District Plan provisions with respect to plantation forestry activities, he said.
The initial application, before it was amended, triggered consent for 709ha because of the risk of wilding spread. It was council’s intention to decline the high risk areas, which prompted the applicant to amend its application and eliminate or better manage the wilding risk, he said.
‘‘Written approvals were not required due to the effects and management of the plantation being less than minor. The type of species, the wilding risk and the downwind land use were all factors outlined in the national environmental standard along with wilding management were all factored into this decision,’’ Roy said.
The applicant proposed mitigation measures including perimeter plantings of a hybrid species surrounding Douglas fir, to act as a buffer to inhibit the spread of the lighter Douglas fir seeds, and active monitoring and removal of any wilding trees within two kilometres of the plantation.
Environment Southland biosecurity and biodiversity operations manager Ali Meade said while wilding conifers are listed as a ‘‘progressive containment’’ species in our Regional Pest Management Plan, the rules don’t prevent the trees being planted as part of a plantation forestry. Plantations are dealt with under the National Environmental Standards for Plantation Forestry.
The Mid Dome Wilding Trees Charitable Trust, Federated Farmers, Forest and Bird and the Department of Conservation, which neighbours Mataura Valley Station, are not happy about the consent being issued.
They’re concerned that the wilding trees will spread, and that there was no consultation.
The trust has been clearing wilding contorta pines from Mid Dome, which is south of the Mataura Valley Station, and other areas of northern Southland since 2007.
It has spent $10 million on aerial spraying and ground control with chainsaws, or pulling trees out of the ground. If the trees aren’t eradicated it is predicted that wilding pines in the Mid Dome area will totally overwhelm 61,000 ha of high country tussock and pastoral grassland in the short term, and infest a further 100,000 hectares by 2053.
Trust chairwoman Ali Ballantine Timms said the Douglas firs were considered ‘‘the possum of the tree world’’.
‘‘We’ve been successful at Mid Dome, but what we don’t want to see is a whole lot more sites spring up like Mid Dome was, because no one has the money or the resources to fight it.’’
The prevailing westerly wind could easily spread Douglas fir seeds from Mataura Valley Station, she said.
‘‘It’s a very windy place and the seeds aren’t very big. They are easily carried on the wind.’’
Offspring from trees at Mid
Dome have been found 40 kilometres downwind and up to altitudes of 1400 metres.
She questioned whether the monitoring active monitoring and removal of any wilding trees would be carried out, and who would make sure it was.
She said the planting at Mataura Valley Station would lead to a loss of diversity in the tussock land, and reduced water yields in the upper Mataura River catchment. In areas where trees had been planted, rivers ran lower because the trees absorbed rainfall. There would be displacement of traditional farming systems with low environmental impacts, she said.
Department of Conservation acting operations manager Murihiku district John McCarroll said in terms of the planting of Douglas Fir, which is the second most invasive species of wilding tree in New Zealand, the department does hold some concerns on the possible impact upon the environment.
Public conservation land bordering this property holds several plants unique to the Eyre Mountains, as well as seven species of native lizard, a population of rare snail (Powelliphanta spp) and the only population of rock wren found outside of the Southern Alps, he said. ‘‘If wilding trees became established in the public conservation tussock land it would prove devastating for our native flora and fauna.’’