Axe to pine programme is 'heartbreaking' says iconic landscape painter

Sunday, 3 September 2023

His paintings memorialise the isolated beauty of the Central Otago landscape, with a suggestion of man’s insignificance in the grandeur of the natural world.

But it is with two photographs that Sir Grahame Sydney has captured how humans have encroached that native wilderness, introducing a silent intruder that is slowly swallowing it up.

The first, taken in 2004, is the view from his home at the foot of the Dunstan mountains, looking out to the snow-covered, rolling folds of the Hawkdun Range. In the foreground stands a lone, squat pine.

The same panorama, recorded 19 years later, is dramatically different. That single tree is now a thick, mature forest, inching across the valley floor. The pines stand 10-12m tall.

“The golden, grassy foreground for my views of the Hawkduns and Mount St Bathans has gradually turned into a forest that is so dense now that you cannot walk in it,” Sydney says.

“Now, there's no grassy foreground at all. There's an evergreen forest, which is exactly the opposite of one of the many things that makes Central Otago attractive: the very discernible and enjoyable differences in the seasons.

“I don’t think that it has any place here. That lovely Central Otago landscape of tussocks and golden, arid brittle dryness, shimmering in the sunlight, is being very steadily and rather explosively obliterated by uncontrolled wildings.”

Wilding pines are conifers (like cedars, pines, firs, cypress, larches, and spruces) that were introduced to New Zealand in the 1880s for forests, shelterbelts and erosion plantings. Sydney’s original neighbour is likely a tenacious remnant from the gold-mining era.

Through much of the last century, the Crown planted hectares and hectares of pinus contorta, Douglas fir and Corsican, Ponderosa and Scots pines, to stop soil erosion and hold land slips.

That programme only halted in the 1980s, and with it came a slow realisation of the damage wrought by this army of weedy colonisers, marching across New Zealand’s most famous landscapes.

Wilding pines became a blight, from Northland’s dune lakes, through the South Island high country, and as far south as Bluff Hill Motupōhue, eating up 90,000 hectares a year.

Modelling from crown research institute Manaaki Whenua shows that if left unchecked, 1.8 million hectares would be covered in dense forest over the next half century.

Between 2016 and 2021, $37m was invested in a National Wilding Conifer Control Programme, a government-led partnership with local councils, the farming and forestry industries, landowners and community volunteers.

With Covid-19 came economic stimulus cash and $100m was committed to the eradication, under the Jobs for Nature employment creation scheme. It tackled infestations across 1.4 million hectares.

Last year, that funding began to dry up, with the annul budget reduced from $25m to $10m.

One beneficiary had been the Central Otago Wilding Pine Group, of which Sydney is a member.

“It did change things rapidly,” he says. “We went from a $150,000 operating budget to about $800,000. That meant we could employ a number of different crews.

“We could do far more helicopter spraying, spread out much further and do the necessary follow-ups two to three years after each attack. That now is going to stop because the funding is simply not going to be there.

“It is a backward step. It's heartbreaking to be honest, because we were approaching some degree of real control and containment.”

Essential to the pest control is maintenance work, where crews return to tackle returning young seeds.

“Everything we've done, everywhere we've controlled will very likely return with bells on and be worse than it ever was.”

Al Brown is another prominent voice throwing support behind the call to restore funding.

Since 2021, his Tipping Point brand of wines has donated to the Wilding Free Mackenzie group, which removes pine from sensitive landscapes around Lake Takapō and the Upper Ōhau River.

“They’re like bloody thistles,” the chef, author and restaurateur said. “We know how quickly they grow. It seems half-cocked – like starting a job, getting a quarter-way through, and then pulling the money out.”

Brown has spent time on the tools, cutting down small pines and applying herbicide to the stump to prevent regrowth. “It’s back-breaking work,” he says. “I'd known about the problem, but had no idea of the extent. It’s like a rash on the environment.”

A key part of his role is education, so Kiwis come to understand the invasion in the same way they see the dangers of introduced pests like possums and wild cats.

One risk is fire. Almost 50 properties were destroyed by a blaze that ripped through Lake Ōhau in 2020. Some locals said it was made worse by uncontrolled wilding pines.

Conifers create dry, barren areas by controlling moisture levels in the soil, and needle litter on the forest floor can cause fires to burn longer and hotter. Unlike commercial plantations, wildings grow in irregular patterns with no firebreaks and can be difficult to access.

“Our environment is the one thing that we should be looking after,” Brown says. “It seems like everyone's more interested in getting the price of a loaf of bread down… Mother Nature has hit us on the head – and it’s just fires here, it’s fires in Hawaii and Canada, floods, cyclones.

“I don't get why there's not a lot more thought and talk going into that.”

One woman who is doing the talking is Jo Ritchie, from the Wilding Pine Network. The advocacy group is lobbying ministers, armed with the Government’s own research – a cost-benefit analysis commissioned by the Ministry for Primary Industries.

The report says $10m a year is insufficient, and that level of investment would end up costing $3.8 billion over 50 years through losses in primary production, biodiversity, increased fire risk and water yields.

Wilding conifers can suck up to 40% of water from a catchment, and a control programme protects water for hydropower generation, irrigation, and the productive land saved from infestation, the report says.

“It’s really short-sighted. You only have to flick through the CBA to see the benefits,” Ritchie says.

“It has an impact across primary industry, hydroelectricity, biodiversity. It’s a no-brainer.”

Large areas of Marlborough are infested, and the funding allowed Marlborough District Council to direct programmes across Crown-owned Molesworth Station, the country’s largest farm, Waihōpai and the Sounds.

“It’s been a massive boost,” says district council biosecurity manager Jono Underwood. “It’s really transformed landscapes and seascapes and is a demonstration of what could be achieved.

“That's what has built to this crescendo of a sense of loss, because there's so much more that could be gained.”

The council can’t afford to go it alone.

“Our rating base is in the vicinity of 20,000 people. And we can't look past the fact that a lot of the big issues with our South Marlborough high country are legacies of Crown decisions to plant and over-sow these species in decades past.

“To shift that onto the local community to fund is a bit on the nose.”

Steve Satterthwaite’s Muller Station borders Molesworth, in Awatere Valley. He compares wildings to the rabbit plague, the bane of dryland farmers' lives for 150 years, and spearheaded the creation of the South Marlborough Landscape Restoration Trust.

He and other runholders spend tens of thousands on weed control to stop seeds overrunning the high country – and Marlborough’s wine country.

“The absolute consequence of waving the white flag is that all this pastoral country will turn to pine forest,” he says. “These trees – there’s no stopping them. It cuts tourism – these pastoral landscapes would disappear.

“It cuts irrigation, and water yield. Unchecked, in Marlborough, the biggest risk is to the water yield of the Wairau which feeds the grape industry. The consequences are only just starting to surface.”

Farmers who already bear the costs of eradication wonder about the possibility of a biosecurity levy on other sectors – such as commercial forestry owners, who aren’t compelled to undertake wilding work on neighbouring areas, or hydroelectricity suppliers.

Primary Industries Minister Damian O’Connor is overseas and unavailable for comment. His spokesperson didn’t answer questions about whether commercial co-funding was under consideration.

The funding of $10m per year was secure until 2030, she said.

“The programme has put this funding to excellent use, exceeding targets over the past three years… Our focus is now on maintaining and building on the results the Government’s substantial investment to date has achieved.”

In the meantime, Sydney refuses to add dark green to his palette. He won’t paint the pines into his landscapes.

“I find them so ugly, and so worrying, that I certainly can't think of them in terms of any work that I do.”