Scientific paper calls for urgent review of forestry regulations

Wednesday, 25 September 2024

A scientific paper by Lincoln University ecologists and planners calls for an urgent review of the way plantation forests are regulated

A scientific paper by Lincoln University ecologists and planners calls for an urgent review of the way plantation forests are regulated.

Conditions that led to the destruction wrought by Cyclone Gabrielle are not being effectively addressed by councils and the Ministry of Primary Industries, the paper said.

Author Dr Steve Urlich has requested the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment to investigate the regulation of forestry on steep hill country.

A scientific paper by Lincoln University ecologists and planners calls for an urgent review of the way plantation forests are regulated.

The paper, by senior lecturer in environmental management at Lincoln University, Dr Steve Urlich, and colleague Mawardah Nur Hanifiyani, and titled, A stringent failure: Regulators do not use available tools to protect aquatic ecosystems from clearcut forestry impacts in New Zealand, has been published in the international Journal of Environmental Management.

Examples of poor practice on forestry land around the country

Urlich has passed the paper and a supporting presentation to the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, and has requested an investigation into the regulation of steepland forestry.

The paper points to a lack of resourcing allocated to sedimentation monitoring in waterways, meaning the impact on them from specific forestry blocks was not fully understood, and said without such monitoring it was difficult for councils to convince the Environment Court that more stringent rules were necessary.

It also pointed to councils’ failure to prohibit replanting on erosion-prone slopes.

Dr Steve Urlich is a senior lecturer in Environmental Management at Lincoln University

“The few instances where councils did retain replanting prohibitions under stringency were primarily to protect the margins of vulnerable lowland ecosystems, such as dune lakes and wetlands,” it said.

“These rules fail to address the cause of soil- and slash-laden debris flows, which have been quantified as the main source of sediment delivery to aquatic ecosystems, and mass failures which are the dominant steepland erosion process in New Zealand,” the paper said.

There is a pipeline of material on hills, along river and stream banks, and heavy slash is still being created, Urlich said. This image shows slash left on a Gisborne hillside by Samnic Forest Management Limited.

It said the Ministry of Primary Industries (MPI) claim, made pre-Gabrielle, that the cost of stringency imposed on the forestry industry ‘does not provide any discernible environmental, economic, social or cultural benefit and imposes a cost on forestry sector participants’ was “questionable”.

Urlich said the paper “identified an ongoing regulation failure by MPI after Cyclone Gabrielle in not preventing earthworks, harvesting, replanting and afforestation in the most hazardous parts of hillsides – such as gully headwalls, overstep faces, and deeply incised gullies”.

“Heavy slash is still being left in these places, due to health and safety reasons, and will mobilise chaotically downhill and downstream after intense storm events. There is a pipeline of material on hills, along river and stream banks, and heavy slash is still being created,” he said.

The paper found that regional councils had failed to systemically place more stringent rules allowed under the national forestry regulations to protect river, wetland and coastal ecosystems, and to effectively manage natural hazards exacerbated by forestry to protect human lives and livelihoods, and public infrastructure.

The paper also examined the implementation of national forestry regulations (the NES-PF, which last year was changed to NES-CF), which enabled regional councils to create more stringent rules to protect aquatic ecosystems.

This means that a council could implement policies to protect aquatic ecosystems or human communities that the NES-CF would otherwise permit or authorise.

The research involved surveys of all 16 regional councils or unitary authorities in 2021 and 2022 and the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI). The four regions seriously affected by Cyclone Gabrielle (Northland, Auckland, Gisborne/Tairāwhiti, and Hawke's Bay) were resurveyed in 2024.

Existing regional planning regimes which did not effectively regulate earthworks, harvesting and replanting were “effectively facilitate the exacerbation of natural hazards, as well as ongoing aquatic ecosystem degradation”, Urlich said.

The paper found that regional councils had failed to systemically place more stringent rules allowed under the national forestry regulations to protect river, wetland and coastal ecosystems, and to effectively manage natural hazards exacerbated by forestry to protect human lives and livelihoods, and public infrastructure.

Gisborne District Council was the only one to have taken a “strategic and principled” approach to develop more stringent regulations, such as tougher restrictions on clear-cutting, earthworks, and replanting and new forests on steep erosion-prone convergent landforms to protect aquatic ecosystems and vulnerable communities, the paper found.

While the last government tightened regulations around forestry slash after the cyclone, the paper said national regulations remained ineffective in addressing clear-cut practices that were ill-suited to intense rainfall, and continued to permit replanting on overly steep convergent landforms, where water flow is concentrated downhill, such as deep gullies.

The details of the Government’s announcement this month to modify the ability of councils to protect freshwater ecosystems will be critically examined to understand how far we have come since Cyclone Gabrielle, Urlich said.

“The regulations need urgent amendment to require councils to develop and implement a strategic and principled approach to stringency to better protect aquatic ecosystems, human life, economic livelihoods, and public infrastructure,” the paper found.

It said existing regional planning regimes which did not effectively regulate earthworks, harvesting and replanting were “effectively facilitate the exacerbation of natural hazards, as well as ongoing aquatic ecosystem degradation”.

“Even when councils had funded, or had access to, many scientific studies on forestry-laden debris flows on steep convergent landforms, stringency was not exercised in erosion-prone catchments… This systemic failure occurred irrespective of each council's relative geographic size, share of the total population, and the level of resourcing from annual regional property taxes,” it said.

Urlich said MPI’s view that councils’ ability to place more stringent regulation is a cost to business was based on “poor and incomplete analysis as we identified, and unless the national regulations are tightened, we can expect more scenes of devastation”.

Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment Simon Upton initiated an investigation into alternatives for afforestation in New Zealand in 2022.

The details of the Government’s announcement this month to modify the ability of councils to protect freshwater ecosystems will be critically examined to understanding how far we have come since Cyclone Gabrielle, he said.

“Essentially steepland forestry needs to retreat to the more gentler spurs and lower slopes, as it is currently maladaptive to existing weather and even more so as rainfall intensifies under climate change,” he said.

“If regulations remain permissive there will be serious implications for the resilience of our economy, given the Treasury’s recent advice to Government on the costs of Cyclone Gabrielle and its prediction that future events are probable,” Urlich said.

“There are opportunity costs of cleaning up slash, repairing infrastructure and supporting communities, that could be spent on hospitals, schools, police, etc,” he said.

Stuff sought comment from MPI on the paper.

MPI’s director forestry system at Te Uru Rākau – New Zealand Forests Service, Olivia Sullivan said the NES-CF provided “appropriate regulatory settings for the management of forestry activities”.

“In areas of known high-risk erosion where these rules may not be appropriate, the NES-CF allows for more stringent rules to be placed in council plans. Using stringency is a decision for councils,” she said.

A spokesperson at the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment said Dr Urlich’s paper and request for an investigation were received last Friday.

“In late 2022 the Commissioner initiated an investigation into alternatives for afforestation in New Zealand. The report is likely to be issued in early 2025. This existing investigation is already looking into different forestry management techniques, including on steeplands, and wider regulatory issues,” she said.

Manu Caddie, spokesman for Gisborne environmental group Mana Taiao Tairāwhiti said the paper “confirmed some of the concerns locals have had for more than a decade, since the Ministry for the Environment was replaced as lead agency for the NES, by MPI”.

“It validates the concerns we had about a Ministry responsible for promoting the sector also being responsible for setting the rules,” he said.

“It seems the current government would like us to go back to a situation where councils are not permitted to make rules as stringent as they need to be, which is what we have seen a move towards in Gisborne over recent years, if not elsewhere yet,” Caddie said.