Turkington and incumbent chairman Bruce Gordon were elected in the Manawatu-Rangitikei ward of the Manawatu-Wanganui Regional Council, which trades as Horizons, with Turkington effectively ousting local farmer Gordon McKellar. He is one of six new councillors.
A background in soil conservation, forestry and regional council work meant putting his name forward was a natural step for a man with close connections to the region’s land.
Over the past two decades he has also built a land use and forestry management company that now includes more than 20 logging crews working throughout the central and lower North Island.
But far from advocating a fence to fence carpeting of good farmland in trees Turkington advocates “trees on farms, not farms into trees”.
However, for more effective integration of farming and forestry he wants to see the regional plan redone to better acknowledge the distinct differences in land types and catchments.
Forestry planting decisions are encumbered by a national scale of land erodibility, from green to erodible red zone country.
“What we have is almost two policies at loggerheads with each other.
“To plant in a red zone you need consent and we have about 50,000ha of identified, highly erodible country in our region. These are areas where forestry would be appropriate.
“The problem is forestry companies don’t want to touch it – they don’t want to deal with consents and harvest issues so now those erodible areas are tagged as no-go for forestry. They stay farmed while forestry companies head for the orange and yellow areas.”
He believes regulators have been spooked by the Tolaga Bay waste wood disaster and it has unduly influenced all consequent forestry planning decisions.
Adopting more of a catchment by catchment perspective would allow for unique contour, soil and land use, ensuring forest plantings be adapted to those particular catchments, rather than complying with the existing one-size-fits-all approach.
A more catchment-focused approach in the region would also help get the farmers on board far more effectively with the proposed water and land use regulations.
“If you want to change behaviour you can’t use a piece of Alkathene. You sit down and you talk and build relationships with the people in those catchments.”
Turkington aims to advocate for identifying two to three key concerns in each of the region’s catchments, knowing what is significant in Tararua might differ significantly from what is in Manawatu-Rangitikei to what is in Whanganui.
“Let’s identify them that way and put support and education into solving those issues.”
