The kauri dieback dilemma: Why our native trees will be fine
Friday, 4 May 2018
It's unlikely there are many Kiwis who don’t know and admire the primitive beauty of the mighty kauri tree.
In saying that, no photo could ever do justice to an actual encounter with a specimen such as Tāne Mahuta in the Waipoua Forest in Northland. Only then can the true majesty of kauri trees be understood.
We value the beautiful trees, however I also think we are being severely mislead by the spectre of kauri dieback disease. It’s not surprising either, with self-proclaimed 'experts' and their dire predictions.
Forest & Bird say 'the kauri could be extinct in our lifetime' and claim '20 per cent of kauri in the Waitākere Ranges are dying of the disease'. It's easy to see how many well-meaning people are swept up by this kind of rhetoric and accept such baseless statements as fact.
**READ MORE:
* Politicians vote to close most of West Auckland forest
* Vote nears on Waitākere forest closure; public feedback split
*** Tanekaha affected by kauri dieback, study suggests
Twenty per cent of kauris means that one in five are doomed, but it also means the population of the trees is known, and that is impossible. A million maybe? It’s simply untrue.
Only someone totally ignorant would proclaim kauri will be extinct in our lifetime, because there are no facts to support it. Any attempt to get meaningful data on the subject is hopeless; website links that go nowhere or worse, lead to maps and such that are equally meaningless.
Personally, I believe the disease has been around far longer than has been speculated. Black and white photos taken during the 'heyday' of saw-milling of native trees show plenty of kauri displaying the symptoms of dieback. This is just hypothesis though and I may be wrong, it may have come with pines, another species of conifer, or some other plant, but that's not the point.
It is irrelevant now where it originated, as is the origin of myrtle rust, the most recent bio security event to promote a collective hand-wringing and utterly pointless attempts to stop something microscopic being spread by the wind.
Much has been made of the tardiness of the official response to kauri dieback, but there has been a lot of study done for quite a few years now (a good-earner no doubt) that has proved almost worthless.
The only useful conclusion? That a commercial Phytophora remedy has limited success. Any avocado grower could have told them that for free. Kauri dieback Phytophora (root rot) is very similar to the Phytophora that causes huge losses to avocado trees worldwide, and you can imagine the resources that have been poured into such a commercially valuable crop.
As a keen plants-man with a basic knowledge of high school biology, I readily accept kauri dieback is real and kills kauri (and perhaps other trees) and that it can be spread by humans. It can also be spread by any other animal that walks, including birds.
This is irrefutable, because as a microbe all dieback needs is a tiny amount of infected soil or vegetation to be spread. I would speculate that it could even move small distances on infected leaf litter being blown in the wind, so it is here to stay, if it wasn’t already.
Now, this may all sound very negative, but I don’t want it to. Kauri will survive just fine. I am 100 per cent sure of this because this is the very basis of the natural process. All living things have enemies looking to exploit weaknesses for their own survival, and as a result, some will die or become disadvantaged in some way. Plenty of trees even have mechanisms against their own kind.
For instance, a grove of young kauri rickers (the juvenile pyramidal form) typically grow in close proximity to each other, but not all of them can become Tāne Mahutas because there is not enough space for all of them.
Only the strongest trees in the best positions will survive, the others will not. We’re talking quite long time-scales here.
I attribute a lot of the hysteria surrounding kauri dieback to the biologists and science community in general - they have remained silent when faced with such obviously misleading reporting. It’s very disappointing that they would be afraid to speak out, in spite of the flak they would no doubt encounter.
The media also seems to blindly accept the words of a few experts, some who appear to have jumped to some very iffy conclusions.
The Auckland Council has been forced by little more than hearsay to close the Waitākere Ranges in order to preserve the appearance of their ecologically responsible status. Because of this we have a 'rāhui', no - let's call it what it is - a ban on the public entering our park.
The only good thing I can see from the whole debacle is the long overdue upgrade of the very poorly maintained track system, but that will mean a lot of digging, building and workers in the areas deemed most sensitive. Really? I mean, really?
The council and the self-proclaimed experts have painted themselves into a corner. Kauri dieback is here to stay. There is no, and will not be, a cure. But kauri will survive just fine.
The people who love the Waitākeres will be excluded, while the experts traipse them far and wide. In a few years we will be allowed to re-enter our park and nothing will have changed. How long will that take, though? That's the burning question.