Tuesday, March 19, 2024

Rule hamper forests growth

Avatar photo
New rules could curb the forestry sector’s ability to create jobs, Forest Owners Association chairman Phil Taylor says.
Reading Time: 2 minutes

New and proposed regulations such as the Forest Amendment Bill, designed to provide a predictable flow of logs to domestic processors, intervenes in log sales and supply contracts.

Similarly, Environment Canterbury’s proposed Plan Change 17 will impose even higher land use and environmental regulation on forestry than it faces nationally.

“At the time the Government is looking to the primary industry to lead the recovery we need to reduce what I call dead weight on the supply chain.”

Forestry exports to the end of June 2019 were $6.9 billion but the sector has the potential to grow that figure and generate large numbers of jobs, Taylor says.

One obstacle hindering that is the three years it has so far taken for the Environmental Protection Agency to assess a fungicide to replace methyl bromide.

As a result, the association has asked for a delay to the October phasing out of the use of methyl bromide.

Improving wood treatment technology is growing demand for pruned logs but the lack of a price differential between pruned and unpruned logs means silviculture is no longer practised on 55% of forests.

Taylor would like a joint industry-Government analysis of impediments and benefits to help forest owners decide if silviculture is worthwhile.

In 2017 the Labour Party campaigned on a wood-first policy it has so far not implemented, a move Taylor says would encourage domestic wood processing and generate jobs.

International prices have recovered from a slump earlier in the year but Taylor says the sector needs investment in market development for forest products and a levy imposed on imported processed wood products to fund development of the NZ market.

As with others in the primary sector, forestry wants reform of the Resource Management Act to remove unnecessary impediments to greenfield investment such as processing mills and to focus a law he says has drifted.

“The Significant Natural Areas regulations are an example of how far interpretation of the RMA has drifted, to where the better custodians of the natural environment are the ones most deemed to be required to restrict their activities as a result.”

Total
0
Shares
People are also reading