Part of a hope-based network
restoring and enjoying the Mahurangi

Editor Cimino Cole

Cimino 27 November 2009

Protected Monoculture: A crowd of regrowth kahikatea securely protected from grazing dairy cattle by the stringently efficient Armstrong fence. Photographer Michael Bergin

Aotearoa was once a land of forests.

That was before Mäori settlers, with fire, and European settlers, with steel and fire, reduced the ancient forests in most regions to tiny remnants.

It is hardly surprising that, when a powerful protection ethos evolved under the banner of conservation, the imperative was to protect, inviolate.

A vision for indigenous forestry has been slow to emerge, partly due to an almost religious reverence for the surviving remnant forest and partly to due to the perception that indigenous tree species were inherently slow growing. The spectacularly fast-growing, forestry-bred, radiata pine merely exacerbated the misapprehension.

The perception that indigenous trees were too slow growing would almost certainly have been dispelled had the Forest Service survived to develop indigenous forestry.

Indigenous forestry is logically the sole facilitator of large-scale indigenous forest restoration. Only by developing the infrastructure needed to establish indigenous forests on a large scale, is large-scale restoration possible, let alone affordable. While volunteer–raised and established indigenous plants can make an impressive difference in urban corners and in popular parks, only through economically viable indigenous forestry will a measurable percentage of marginal or unsustainable pasture be planted.

The key infrastructure required, and objective of the open-ground project, is forestry-scale nurseries producing indigenous plants and seedlings—it is thanks to exotic forestry that, in spite of the profound loss of indigenous stands, a third of Aotearoa is still forested.

Indigenous forestry is the friend of exotic forestry, pastoral farming, and the indigenous forest restoration—even the urban park, reserve or riparian margin.

Many more remnants, of original or regrowth forest could be protected and protected better, by combining indigenous forestry with restoration. The small, achingly attractive regrowth kahikatea stands that epitomise the Hauraki Plains and parts of the Waikato, and elsewhere, are a prime example. By carefully extracting the millable timber and planting the perimeter in successive bands of kauri, kahikatea, tötara, harakeke and toetoe, a larger and healthier stand could be established. The kahikatea in the inner sanctum, which would achieve greater height and girth, could be protected legally in perpetuity.

• • Conservation addressed.
• • Biodiversity addressed.
• • Sustainability addressed.

And all self-funded!

Since the disestablishment of the Forest Service in 1987, successive governments have failed to develop even an indigenous forestry strategy, much less a latter-day Indigenous Forestry Service. As much as the Forest Service deserved to be emulated, the establishment of a state-owned enterprise is both improbable and, arguably, undesirable—some form of hybrid corporation would be functionally better and socially more attractive.

A compelling national indigenous forestry strategy would include government involvement in a state–social enterprise: A one-stop indigenous forestry shop.

Indigenous Forestry Aotearoa?


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Part of a hope-based network restoring and enjoying the Mahurangi
 Editor Cimino Cole