Forestry Minister Stuart Nash has overseen the renaming of Te Uru Rakau Forestry New Zealand to Te Uru Rakau-New Zealand Forest Service, a name change he described as small but significant.
“It will provide more on-the-ground support to iwi, private landowners, farm foresters, local councils, processors and other forestry organisations,” Nash said.
The body will have greater focus on professional advisory services and forestry management expertise, and will be relocating to a new head office in Rotorua.
A long-time concern of supporters of farm forestry has been the lack of extension services available to provide farmers and landowners with the “right tree for the right place” advice.
The move has been welcomed by the Farm Forestry Association president Graham West. He says it has a sense of “back to the future” to it, harking back to the Forest Service days when extension officers would distribute advice to a new generation of farm foresters.
“It is fair to say there has been something of a vacuum there when it comes to knowledge about tree planting and forestry. The Farm Forestry Association has been providing some information and knowledge where possible on a voluntary basis, but it is overdue for having a professional approach to it,” West said.
He hoped the move would include more funds to finance the expertise, and to fill Te Uru Rakau with a greater level of practical forestry experience.
“There is a need to bring in practical, experienced people, often older, who may have been forest rangers,” he said.
“I can only think of one in the organisation at present, they are generally people brought in to provide information on grants, but don’t have the gravitas to front a group of farmers with practical advice on tree planting.”
West also welcomed the social dimension the minister acknowledged the service would deliver. Nash says a public forestry service would help drive the focus on regional economic development, skills training and a low emissions future.
“The old Forest Service also provided a social service in many respects. It employed a lot of people in the regions in jobs when there was not a lot of other employment. We have really come back to that now today,” he said.
In announcing the new service, Nash acknowledged the potential forestry held for Māori, and the support for Māori aspirations for land management, economic development and job creation.
Te Uru Rakau stemmed from the One Billion Trees project, which stopped accepting funding applications late last year.
About $23 million of the $240m project remains unallocated and will be channelled into the new forest service model.
West says the focus on advisory services would do much to help address the major problem that forestry was not always well understood by farmers.
