True Story: Wilding pines strangle Kiwi landscapes, but a resistance fights back

Thursday, 17 November 2022

True Story is proudly brought to you by Disney+. Listen to the full podcast in the player below.

From the air above the magnificent Mackenzie Basin, the enemy is difficult to spot at first.

That is, if you don’t know what you’re looking for.

But once it’s pointed out, all you can see are the signs of a pernicious invader, one that is attempting to strangle the South Island high country.

On a helicopter flight out of Twizel, Environment Canterbury’s Steve Palmer hardly even notices the beautiful scenery down below.

**READ MORE:

* True Story: When the app which is essentially your boss stands you down

* Fears wilding pine issue has been underestimated, expert says

* Pest tree mission at Tongariro National Park gets cash boost

* Work to clear wilding pines around Lake Ōhau completed

**

“Quite frankly, I just see a pest that has volume and is rapidly moving up into our most vulnerable landscapes,” Palmer tells Stuff’s new podcast, True Story.

And what is this pest? Trees – more specifically wilding pines, self-seeded, fast-growing varieties of plants that were set loose after being trialled for erosion control in the 1950s.

In the past couple of decades, they have taken hold.

“They just spread so rapidly and it’s not just one or two on the hill – these things can infill within years, not decades,” says Palmer, ECAN’s biosecurity adviser for special projects.

A 2020 estimate showed that, left unchecked, pines would cause $5.3 billion of damage to the economy by destroying valuable land.

The story of the fight to stave off the advance of wilding pines features on the second episode of True Story, Bad Seeds. The episode looks at how we decide what is a pest and what isn’t – what flora and fauna should die, and what should thrive.

The fact that a tree ranks as such a dangerous pest might surprise some people.

But Palmer has no doubt they deserve their status.

Asked where wilding pines rank as far as pests go, he tells True Story: “I guess anybody who works in the pest control space will always say their pest is number one … but wildings have to rate up there.

“I wouldn’t like to put it in a category because you only have to have one stoat that’s killing multiple kiwi and that’s dreadful. But in terms of scale – ecosystems, production values and landscapes – the wilding really does tick a lot of boxes.”

We met Palmer in Twizel because it is known as “ground zero” in the fight against the invasive pines. “This is where probably 30-40% of our funding has gone because that’s the extent of the problem down here.”

Overall, Canterbury has received about half of the $137 million of government funding made available since 2016 to help it get on top of the problem in the 2.8 million hectares of land in the region considered vulnerable.

A four-year, $100 million government programme to tackle the trees was announced in 2020, and the Ministry for Primary Industries says there’s a commitment for $10 million of baseline funding from the 2023-2024 financial year.

“Any further investment will be decided by ministers as part of normal Budget processes,” says an MPI spokesperson.

Biosecurity Minister Damien O’Connor said in September that 1.4 million hectares of native and productive land had been protected from wilding pines across the country in the past two years and hundreds of jobs had been created.

He said the spread had been stopped or slowed in many areas. “From the dune lakes of the Te Aupōuri Peninsula in Northland, to the high country of Molesworth, and to the sacred Motupōhue Bluff Hill at Invercargill, the scenes are striking,” said O’Connor. “Native tussock, bush and grazing land are recovering, and the outlook for biodiversity is brighter.”

As much as Palmer is pleased with the progress since 2020, he says the control efforts – pulling, sawing, spraying and felling trees – need to keep going.

“If we took our foot off the pedal, you'd have wilding conifers up to that snowline within probably 15 years and it'll be blanket, it won't just be one or two,” he says, pointing up to the Southern Alps.

The problem with the trees is they take over productive land, increase the risk of wildfires, and they destroy native habitats by out-growing everything.

“It becomes a monoculture,” says Palmer. “There's no real biodiversity going on underneath it.”

If you’re wondering about whether destroying trees is a good idea when trees are supposed to be good for the environment, the answer is that the cost of them outweighs any benefits, ECAN says.

Also, as so-called tree weeds, wilding pines cannot be registered as forests in the country’s emissions trading scheme.

Cutting them down, though, does have an environmental spin-off. Palmer says they are looking at using the trees for the biofuel market.

“That’s hopefully going to be a big player because they could take really crap trees and turn them into a resource.

“It’s still a fledgling market but we’re working closely with them.”

True Story is a new current affairs podcast from Adam Dudding and Eugene Bingham, the makers of Stuff’s smash-hit podcast, The Commune. Each episode of season one features a different story and will be released weekly on all podcast platforms.