It was the idea of prominent ratepayer Duncan MacIntyre, who farmed on the coast at Porangahau. MacIntyre was then the MP for Hastings; a complex and talented man, and a rising star in the Holyoake government.
Environmentally, he was before his time and in 1970 became our first Minister for the Environment.
I recall MacIntyre stating at a forestry seminar in the early 1980s on the Tokomaru Bay Marae (he was then MP for the East Cape and Minister of Agriculture) that the Patangata council’s tree-planting initiative would provide income to offset rates.
He couldn’t have been more wrong.
The trees were never given any management that qualified for the term silviculture. Some had their central leader cut out when young, which is the antithesis of silviculture, surely.
They now are a metre through with massive branches, hemmed in by a fence on one side and a road, now likely to be sealed, on the other. Pan Pac is not interested in them for pulp and the cost of removing them is beyond the means of the district counil. Where some have been removed, at great cost, uncontrolled seedlings have taken their place. In some instances seedling have established on the opposite side of the roads.
These trees have at least another century of life and remain an awful imposition on the landscape. One, just 100 metres from my entrance, has to be the ugliest tree on the planet.
But it is not the only example where well-intended initiatives by public institutions have been accompanied by ignorance of consequence.
Since the 1950s old catchment boards then regional councils have promoted the planting of millions of poplar trees over farmland to arrest erosion. They have done a magnificent job, along with willows, in soil stabilisation.
Poplars are ideally suited for this but no serious consideration has been given to their management and potential harvest for timber.
In many instances they have now reached a point where their size causes them to become a liability. Like those roadside pines they will live for another century if not felled, probably to waste.
What a mess to clean up. As an indication, the largest poplar anywhere is in a Hastings park, planted about 1870. It’s massive. The slow process of dying is under way and in due course and at great cost it will be removed by the council.
And this is just a single tree on flat ground.
Globally, poplar is the most widely cultivated genus for timber so why not exploit these trees for profitable removal when they are past their use-by date?
So, we don’t just need vision – that to be imagined – but to merely open our eyes to the vistas – those graphic examples.
Where is this leading?
If you haven’t guessed, it is to the headlong rush to plant a billion trees within the decade, driven by the Government.
This has the makings of a landscape disaster and, in areas where contiguous whole-farm plantings in pine are done, the destruction of the social infrastructure that underpins rural life.
No one will be counting them but progress will be estimated, no doubt with some creativity, and boasted electorally if targets are being met or taunted if not.
It’s all about politics, not the future of New Zealand’s heralded landscape.
Forget about numbers. Let’s consider outcomes.
There are creative options here that fill the yawning gap between blanket radiata and indigenous forests. What can other countries show us?
The rural landscapes of the United Kingdom and northern Europe show a picturesque harmonising of trees and structures into the productive farm landscape. This has evolved over many centuries and now has reached a high degree of permanence and is in accord with public preference. That is not to say we should replicate it, we should not, but it can inspire and demonstrate.
Central European forestry ethic features the concept of what the Germans call plenterwald. That is a perpetual, productive forest of mixed and managed species. High-value logs are removed when ready, often with draught horses to minimise forestry damage.
We could do the same with native associations, which include selected species managed for eventual harvest and. likewise, with exotic hardwood associations. These forests are picturesque, favoured for recreation and meet all the virtues that forests have to offer environmentally.
Then, as alluded to above, there is the option of silvipastoral systems involving managed and marketed poplars over pasture or woodlots of reasonably fast-growing species alternative to radiata, such as redwoods, and suitable eucalyptus species.
What the Government needs to do is to establish an advisory structure to bring together knowledge and ideas involving farm foresters, research institutions, regional councils and professional foresters to develop concepts in accord with general public aspirations and which will advance rather than potentially corrupt our rural landscape.
It is true, we need more trees, as does the planet but NZ can be proud of its forestry practice.
Our indigenous forest is protected over private and public land and almost all of our prodigious appetite for wood is satisfied from our softwood plantation estate with more besides exported. What other country can claim that? But we need vision as to the possibilities and an understanding of the issues to accompany this bucket of money.
This crash programme is dragging pine forestry down over stable and productive pastoral land and made more irreversible by the change in land ownership that goes with it.
The consequences will last for generations, perhaps centuries.
Who am I?
Ewan McGregor is a Waipawa farmer.
