His office has expressions of interest from more than 30 landowners interested in participating.
He expects his department to plant about 4000ha on leased land or in joint ventures in 2019 and 20,000ha by 2020 with the rest of the 50 million new trees to be planted for each of the next 10 years by private companies and individuals.
Limited seedling stocks mean it will be next year before planting stars at scale but Foran said the billion trees will include manuka, riparian management, erosion prevention on hill country and in the conservation estate.
Crown Forestry is a business unit in the Ministry for Primary Industries and Foran said the department has started work building a tree counter to monitor progress in reaching the Government’s target.
Lease or joint ventures with landowners will be based on commercial principles.
Blocks have to be greater than 200ha to achieve economies of scale, muist be planted without violating regional or district plans, have not previously been in forest. not be class seven land with environmental and steep terrain issues, have access to utilities and be not too dry or at high altitude.
Arrangements will be for a single rotation, 30-year joint venture or lease with the Government picking up all the forest establishment and management costs.
Landowners will get rent based on land value or enter into an equity share agreement but Foran said agreements will enable Crown Forestry to sell the forests.
Foran said the Government wants the policy to increase the country’s carbon sink and landowners will own the carbon credits or liabilities, potentially benefiting landowners should agriculture enter in to the Emissions Trading Scheme.
The scheme is expected to generate up to 30m tonnes of carbon credits by 2030 in addition to the 18m tonnes from existing forests.
Crown Forestry manages the Crown’s 15,855ha of commercial forest interests, of which 90% are on Maori-owned land covering 16 forests on the North Island and one in the South Island.
It also administers six afforestation leases, Crown-owned land leased to forest companies and former New Zealand Forest Service-granted loans to local authorities.
Foran said as yet unspecified funding for the billion tree programme will come from the Government’s $1b Provincial Growth Fund.
Forest Owner’s Association spokesman Don Carson said the rate of planting required to meet the Government’s billion-tree policy has been met before, however, insufficient time for nurseries to scale up seedling planting mean it will take a year for the forest estate to start expanding.
In 1994 there was 98,000ha of new forestry planted and in that decade there was more than 500,000ha planted.
“Physically it’s not a problem.
“We need about 1000 planters doing about a hectare each a day over a 100-day planting season.”
Carson said planting had been increasing in the last few years, from 50m in 2016 to 60m last year and an expected 70m this winter.
