Protecting the bush

Forest and Bird, Issue 266, 1 November 1992, Page 22

Protecting the bush

MAJOR PURCHASE by the Forest Heritage Fund has been the preservation of 92 hectares of matai and beech forest at Ngaroma beside North Canterbury’s Conway River. Sheep farmer Neville Hyde has milled a number of native trees in his time but confesses to being "a bit of a greenie". He and his wife Ronelle Marie agreed to sell 47 hectares of kahikatea and matai forest, uncommon in Canterbury, then generously gifted an adjoining 45 hectares of podocarp and beech forest. Neville Hyde says the price paid for the first block "wasn’t within a bull’s roar" of what he could have expected to make from taking an estimated 300 cubic metres of matai and kahikatea timber off the block. But he is pleased that the forest will continue to provide a home for tui, kereru, South Island robin and other birdlife, and that his efforts over the last 42 years to control possums and wild pigs have not been in vain.

Qa ny a" A OREST AND BIRD and the A Maruia Society began campaigning 4 to protect silver beech forest in the Waipon Gorge near Dunedin in 1988. It is the most significant remaining area of silver beech forest in the eastern South Island north of the Catlins and links two existing scenic reserves. Pledges for $50,000 were received to help with the purchase and offers of compensation were made to the landowner. The campaign was unsuccessful and logging continued but in May this year Denis Marshall was able to announce that 265 hectares of the forest had been purchased using the Forest Heritage Fund.

N 1991 the Forest Heritage Fund brought Hugh Wilson’s and the Maurice White Conservation Trust’s dream of a "summit to the sea" reserve on Banks Peninsula within reach. A grant of more than $100,000 helped the Trust to purchase some 900 hectares of Otanerito Station which adjoins its existing 109 hectare Hinewai reserve. The purchase is important because many of Banks Peninsula’s "pocket handkerchief’ reserves are too small to protect the whole range of biota and landscapes in the Banks ecological region. The Otanerito valley has a wealth of climatic variations and vegetation types, from the sub-alpine and montane vegetation of Stony Bay Peak to filmy ferns and nikau palms closer to sea level.

HE FOREST Heritage Fund has provided welcome assistance to community and environmental organisations working on conservation projects in their localities. Their limited budgets can make protection through land acquisition a heart-breaking task because the sums involved are so huge. The fund’s purchase of Awakiki Bush, near Balclutha, was assisted by a $7,000 donation from Forest and Bird’s South Otago Branch. The forest had been part of the Dent family farm since the early 1900s and John and Elaine Dent had declined several approaches to mill it. With more than 330 totara and 100 matai trees, the 31-hectare block is the largest and most intact remnant of totara~dominated podocarp forest in the region. It is also a valuable landscape feature in an area where fertile rolling downlands have been largely developed for farming.

N ITS FIRST YEAR of operation the fund spent only half of its $6.75 million allocation because of what Denis Marshall has called "the commendably cautious way it bought property". The committee considered applications totalling $11 million in 1990-91 but "insufficient proposals were put before us to protect high-quality land at a price we considered to be fair," says McSweeney. The under-spending was criticised by some but, says Kevin Smith, "conservation dollars are harder to get and scarcer than any other dollar in government and it has given the fund a lot of credibility with Treasury and other ministers that the committee hasn’t blown its budget". The National Government reduced the fund’s allocation by $1.75 million to $5 million for the 1991-92 financial year. Committee members claim the fund escaped lightly given the current economic climate and cuts in other areas of government spending. Forest and Bird has called for the budget for the fund and Nga Whenua Rahui to be increased to $10 million. Establishing the Forest Heritage Fund as a separate entity rather than just topping up DoC’s land acquisition budget has had its advantages. "In the land acquisition area DoC 1s often no different from conservation groups. Staff set their hearts on particular areas which may not be the key ones, or they are prepared to pay too high a price," Kevin Smith says. "Having a group of people with a national overview who recognise that there is a limited pool of money means applications are assessed on the basis of national priorities, unaffected by the personal ambitions of particular regional conservators or senior managers." The fund operates as a contestable

bank except that it is in the business of grants rather than loans. Every application placed before the committee competes on an equal basis with every other, regardless of the individual or organisation making it. Voluntarism, with a willing seller or covenanter, is central to the fund’s operation but applicants do not need to own the forested land at the centre of an application. So professional and communitybased organisations, local and regional authorities, government departments and

FOREST HERITAGE

agencies, national umbrella organisations, as well as private landowners can all bid for assistance. One of the challenges facing the fund is to be proactive in identifying opportunities for protecting significant forested areas, instead of relying on what the mail bag brings. DoC is considering a proposal by the fund that reconnaissance-style accelerated assessments be done of private forest within each conservancy. These surveys would be less comprehensive but faster than those involved in the Protected Natural Areas programme. D1 Lucas says they would put the fund’s committee in a better position to judge the significance of individual applications.

HE PERFORMANCE of the Forest Heritage Fund to date in removing around 48,000 hectares of forested land from the effects of grazing by stock and the blades of bulldozers and chainsaws has been impressive. It has faced an extraordinarily difficult working environment with the Indigenous Forest Policy in limbo until the Forests Amendment Bill was introduced last July. By announcing in November 1990 that it would move to control clearfelling and then doing nothing until mid-1992, National breathed life into a dying native timber milling industry and unleashed an

orgy of forest destruction. Logging contractors were quick to approach private landowners scare-mongering about lost opportunities for a financial return unless cutting rights were sold smartly. The fund’s resources have been stretched because landowners have based their asking price on what they would earn by clearfelling whole blocks for timber. Under a regime of sustainable forest management the costs of protection to the fund would only be the loss of the sustained yield. The Forests Amendment Bill purports to establish such a regime. But at the time of writing, loopholes such as allowing landowners to appeal to clear coupes of up to 20 hectares of beech forest, mean the legislation falls well short. A comprehensive ban on the export of sawn native timber, as well as sawlogs and chips, is also vital. Without it the fund is effectively competing with overseas interests in the market for native forests as timber. It is unrealistic to expect the fund to be able to answer all the problems which exist in protecting our dwindling forest legacy. When the Resource Management Bill was being debated, Forest and Bird’s calls for the Indigenous Forest Policy to be linked to the Bill were ignored. The legislation treats water but not native forests as a public resource. Any individual or organisation wanting to discharge into water or take or divert water from a river or lake requires the consent

of a regional council, through a regional plan or a permit application. Yet in many parts of New Zealand if forest cover is not required for soil conservation purposes, a landowner can log 100 hectares of native forest without going near a district or regional council for permission. To enable the fund’s resources to be fully effective the Resource Management Act should be amended to require landowners contemplating logging indigenous forest to seek a resource consent from a local authority and any logging to be part of a sustainable management regime. MORE COST-EFFECTIVE method of defining covenant boundaries for land registration purposes must be found if a large chunk of the fund’s budget is not to be swallowed up paying for survey costs. In 1989 Tasman Forestry decided to protect 16,000 hectares of Bay of Plenty forest including an area of prime kokako habitat. But when DoC and Tasman came to tie up the legal details of the Tasman Accord they found themselves faced with a likely $40,000 bill for surveying land the company owned to identify the 16 covenant areas. The fund recently agreed to pay the major proportion of these costs.

Some district land registrars are prepared to accept a survey plan of covenant boundaries drawn from an aerial topographic photograph but others require more extensive field work. The issue needs to be worked through with the surveying profession and the Departments of Justice, and Survey and Land Information. Rating relief for protected land would provide an incentive for many private land owners to retain forested areas, particularly in areas such as Northland and on the East Coast where farm incomes are often low. The recent Rating Powers Amendment Act gives local authorities the option of rates relief but does not go far enough. "Nobody should be rated on natural habitats or undeveloped and unserviced natural land because you end up with a 1950s reason for clearing forests to pay rates bills," says Kevin Smith. In the final analysis the fund reflects our continuing, though understandable, preoccupation with forests. However generously the fund committee defines indigenous forest, its mandate does not extend to protecting wetlands, tussock grasslands, coastal dunelands and shrublands in their own right. Applications for funding to protect a "superb"

high country wetland and a coastal sandspit have been declined because of the minimal amount of associated forest. If the fund’s kaupapa and budget were widened to become a Natural Heritage Fund it could help protect the full array of biological treasures on these islands of Aotearoa. "

Eugenie Sage is a freelance journalist based in Christchurch.