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Ecology Action on a Fringe-Urban Hillside |
A continuing Local Programme
The education facilities can be freely used by any environmental group.
North Shore Botanic Gardens.
I
wonder about the trees Robert Frost
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Updated 29 November 2008 Archives
About 80 million years ago New Zealand and New Caledonia split away from Australia. “While the Antarctic ice sheet has long obliterated their Antarctic cousins, plants belonging to these families still inhabit many of the fragments of what was once Gondwana. The well-known South African proteas represent one such group of survivors. In the mountains of Chile, New Zealand and New Caledonia there survive even closer relatives of the Australian species…. Although it started out with a similar flora and fauna to New Caledonia and Australia, New Zealand’s fertile soils, relatively large size, cold climate and isolated position have dictated that it evolve in a very different direction….mammals were never a feature of the New Zealand land fauna……until 800 years ago New Zealand had the most extraordinary assemblage of birds. Nothing like it was found anywhere else on earth. In New Zealand birds occupied all the major ecological niches…nowhere else did birds evolve to be the ecological equivalent of giraffes, kangaroos, sheep, striped possums, long-beaked echidnas and tigers….New Zealand is a completely different experiment in evolution…” -from The Future Eaters by Dr.Tim Flannery. A Desert Future for New Zealand? An article written while travelling with overseas visitors from Rotorua to the Far North via Bay of Plenty and Coromandel. The comments on forestry apply equally to other areas. Erosion of New Zealand’s topsoil is now taking place at ten times the world average, says a contributor to the New Zealand Herald on December 28th. This is a frightening figure. It is an indictment of our government, our land management practices, and our Resource Management Act. If this process is not checked, it threatens not only our way of life in this “clean, green land but the very survival of human society here. How is this possible, after only two hundred years of European occupation? Vast areas of our small planet have in fact become virtually uninhabitable desert largely through the activities of increasing numbers of people. Whole civilisations have disappeared in Africa, Asia and the Americas. The primary justification and responsibility for any government are the protection of territory, led by the basic resource of fertile soil. Because of New Zealand’s geography, topography, geology and rainfall this apparently abundant resource is particularly vulnerable and rapidly disappearing. We have squandered our rich forest cover, nearly exhausted accessible minerals and depleted soil fertility with unsustainable agricultural practices and chemicals. When does this stop? Our political focus is on economic “growth” meaning more “development”, more people, more exports and more soil loss. Urban growth, large scale farming and monoculture forestry are soil destroyers. Travel this land and look closely at what is happening around you. Ask yourself: “is this sustainable? Does it show a real “profit” or cost the country far more in hidden and unrecovered costs than the individual stands to gain?.” Unless we rapidly restrict and regulate these activities so that they are truly sustainable the future is bleak. A major factor in this unhealthy scenario is the present forest industry, widely perceived as of vital importance to our economic future. Because it now consists almost entirely of exotic plantation species there is an emerging downside that must be addressed. If we proceed as we are, there could be huge liabilities both for the industry and the country. Industrialised agriculture, industrialised mining and industrialised forestry have been and are the greatest soil destroyers on planet earth. Certainly they have produced great fortunes for a few people but it is essential that we look carefully at the true costs and benefits to the whole community of the policies that are pursued. Transport Costs Transportation of logs from forest to ports calls for enormous investment in roads and/or rail – both involving massive earthworks which produce erosion and soil loss, together with considerable disruption of other transport requirements. But the assumption that these costs will be recovered by both present and future crops is not necessarily correct. Not only is our existing monoculture forestry predicated on forecasts about future world demand and prices that may prove grossly overoptimistic and take little account of changes in technology, but the total reliance on monoculture of exotic species, short rotation, clearfelling, and use of marginal, steep and unstable land - not to mention vulnerability to disease - offers high risks and very doubtful sustainability. How many crops will the remaining topsoil produce, and what will be left? We may well find that the principal value of these forests is as a carbon sink, meeting the criteria of the Kyoto protocol and its successors. But how long will we want to look at them? Many of their widely promoted benefits have a downside, including the uncertainty of employment and consequent vulnerability of both infrastructure and rural communities. Forestry has gone through many ups and downs in the last century and can be expected to do so again. We have no control over what the rest of the world does with its trees. And despite the vast areas of land involved, is this an industry we taxpayers would want to rescue? Biodiversity Values Equally important to this country is the loss of biodiversity and limitation of options for future generations. If we do not plant more of our indigenous species for all purposes today, if we continue to replace clearfelled pinus radiata with more pinus radiata, what will our grandchildren have? What will our country look like? To stimulate and encourage the widespread planting of native tree species by landowners and investors requires a radical revision of the Forestry Act and of investment policies. Instead of 30 year, clearfelled harvesting we have to provide a minimum of 50 years, planned selective harvesting, guidelines to ensure that a proportion of trees planted are retained indefinitely in appropriate areas – let future generations decide what to do with them. The product will be much more costly but of correspondingly higher value. And the New Zealand landscape will be progressively restored to its natural evolutionary condition. Such a policy has already been offered by our Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. Bleak Highways Already our main highways are lined with devastated, eroding hillsides which have been cleared of one crop of pines and prepared for the next, with topsoil running down to creeks and rivers and beaches for several years in between. This is not a pleasant landscape for us or for our valuable tourist industry or for future generations. It could prove unprofitable in many directions. At the very least we urgently need a requirement that soil erosion from forestry be minimised by modification of clearfelling on all steep country. This may require denser planting and retention of rows at the top and bottom of inclines, or other techniques. Of course this will add to costs, far more than offset by reduction of future cost to the country. SOME COMMENTS RECEIVED: This needs to be published widely. Try Forest Bird magazine. It is sobering and true, I see the devastation as I drive through the South Island where I grew up. I see some good conservation being done within a wider context that is unsustainable and I see how easily the gains will be undone by the impacts of those larger actions.. -from a staff member of the Department of Conservation. Thanks for raising the issues of erosion. Did your article get published? If so, has there been public response to it? I agree with what you are saying. In the 1960s we retained green belts of indigenous forest on the lower slopes of steep dissected hill country in North Westland and suffered some ridicule. We also used strips of indigenous forest running from top to bottom to provide green fire breaks between blocks of exotic plantation. These indigenous forest retentions concentrated possums making it easier to control their populations by ground control measures. Of course the aesthetic results were also pleasing. Another issue we were concerned about in those days was logging technique. We avoided ground control methods such as skidders or high lead cable on steep hill country and used overhead cable as much as possible to ensure movement of logs did not break the duff mantle on the floor of the forest. This mantle stopped any soil erosion. Our greatest challenge was to maintain a roading standard that minimized soil erosion and pollution of water-ways. All these things seemed fundamental common sense to us in those days. Have we lost that faculty these days? -from an experienced forester in Christchurch. Thanks for excellent article John, wishing you a Happy New Year. – from a long-standing member of the Auckland Regional Council The taxodiums are turning to gold, one small oak has shed its foliage. The hydrangeas have lost their colour, but “busy lizzies” continue to brighten the open ground. What a thrill; in late May about sixteen half-grown quail burst out onto the driveway in front of me, just beyond the main bridge. We had not seen any around for some weeks, although there has been an occasional sounding, and this was a large covey at any time. They are obviously learning to band together for protection against predators. Such a large group, not yet hibernating because the weather has been warm, presages more families than usual next summer. And of course the tuis are noisily gorging on the “red hot pokers” now in flower where we have encouraged them around the lawn areas, while the magnificent tree dahlias display their large mauve flowers four metres up where we have supported their brittle stems against trees. More seasonal colour is provided by bushy cassias –“buttercup trees” on driveway corners. Often spurned as “weeds” by serious gardeners, this prolific easily propagated species must be recognised as easily managed (but yes, managed is the operative word) and being leguminous it fixes nitrogen and improves the soil.
Three Streams has been – is a powerhouse for conservation in New Zealand. Some of the local and national campaigns that have been launched or conducted from this (literally) neck of the woods:
Details of each of these initiatives will appear on this website later, and will be preserved in our Archives. Information, Education, Training: We visualise participating in an annual programme of tutorials together with KERP at Glenfield and Fernglen at Birkenhead, so that residents anywhere on North Shore can attend the sessions that suit them on the dates that suit them. A roster of tutors would be arranged.
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