Since project management types adopted the term,
milestone has become a somewhat devalued word.
The open-ground open day at Taupö on Saturday was one of the stages that are termed milestones in the project’s contract with the Sustainable Farming Fund.
Some of the milestones are rather minor, but not this one—it was a stage
and an event:
- • the project’s first full-scale crop of open-ground seedlings ready to be harvested—lifted, as it is termed.
- • the gathering of forty individuals and representatives intensely interested in better ways of establishing indigenous trees
The only way the open day could have been more dramatic would to have timed it for the lifting of the plants, which is underway as this report is published.
However, it was not contemplated as would have placed a totally unreasonable logistical pressure on Taupö Native Plant Nursery and the planting contractors back in the Mahurangi—maybe once the system has been bedded in for a few years the players will want to be that flashy!
But more than a milestone, Saturday may also prove to have been an historic event.
There have been two large-scale land use transformations in post-European Aotearoa:
- • From indigenous forest to pasture
- • From pasture to exotic forest.
While New Zealanders are justifiably proud of both these achievements, there is now an urgent imperative for a third large-scale land use progression:
- • From pasture and exotic forest to sustainable indigenous forest.
By large-scale, is not for a moment meant to imply all, or most. Apart from the economic powerhouse that is dairy, Aotearoa has a moral duty to continue as a gross exporter of food—as do all parts of the planet that can produce food surplus to the requirements of the people of their region.
However, the highways between Taupö and Rotorua are lined with large new dairy farms, on land that was recently producing timber. The methane contribution to the atmosphere—and methane is more deleterious greenhouse gas than CO²—and the nitrate contribution to the lakes, makes this a particularly unfortunate change in land use.
The morning session
By the time the northern contingent arrived, only a
few minutes late—makes note, 5 a.m. at Mahurangi West for 10 a.m. at Taupö is about right as long as time is not lost looking in Huapai for Chris at number 66 and Kim at number 77, rather than visa versa!
The packing shed used for the gathering resembled a half price plant sale. A number of unwitting customers made the same mistake and had to be directed to the nursery’s retail section.
There was still ample time for cups of coffee and introductions, and home-baked biscuits remaining.
Dr David Bergin, who confesses to loving the informality of such workshops, warmly welcomed the 40-odd souls and outlined the day’s programme. The packinghouse doors were rolled down to keep out the deteriorating weather.
David, throughout the morning, wove the discussion together, providing facts and figures as called upon.
Open-Ground Indigenous Plants
Open-Ground Indigenous Plants project manager Cimino Cole told how Auckland Regional Council studies to benchmark a catchment with little urban development had instead shown the harbour going to hell in a handcart.
The five-year Mahurangi Action Plan was the regional council’s timely response. However, the advice of ex soil conservator Mike Vine, based on the Rotorua Lakes experience, was to think long-term—‘We have been at it for 30 years, and it looks as thought it will take at least another 30!’.
And the long-term strategy called for trees, trees and more trees.
Open-ground guru
Over-use by information technology types, means that guru is up there with milestone and icon.
But Jaap van Dorsser’s career with the Forest Research Institute, and his work in the 1960s and 1980s adapting open-ground methods for raising indigenous species squarely justifies Jaap being termed the open-ground guru.
Jaap proceeded to describe and demonstrate the physiology of plants.
Most illuminating to the layperson is the realisation of the importance of the root system. While this should come as no surprise, Jaap, by shaking the media out of plant after plant delivers a graphic lesson, including demonstrating his method of summarily shearing off malformed and circled roots of container-grown plants.
Jaap’s demonstration also leaves an impressive pile of debris!
Silviculture bullet
While the high cost of plants is a part of the reason indigenous trees are excessively expensive to establish, maintenance thorough to canopy closure—the point at which weeds are largely beaten—is another substantial cost.
Chris Ferkins described how by making every other plant a toetoe—not pampas—canopy closure is achieved within nine months. Not only that but the toetoe does a better job than mulch to provide a habitat for indigenous fauna.
The toetoe serves just a transitional function, and dies out after being over-topped by the interspersed woody species.
There may be no single silver bullet to bring down establish costs but toetoe, along with open-ground plants, could form part of the ammunition.
Täne’s Tree Trust
The open day was co-sponsored by Täne’s Tree Trust, which helped ensure the substantial turnout.
Trust chairman Ian Barton spoke to a PowerPoint presentation titled: Why it exists, what it does, why it does it. He said the trust had made good progress with it objectives:
- • Building a network of knowledge sharing amongst stakeholders
- • Establishing a database of past incomplete research projects for benefit of future researchers and establishing new research projects
- • Resolving taxation, legal and political obstacles which act as disincentives to the planting of indigenous trees
- • Maximise economic incentives by reducing establishment costs.
With the exception of the last one—reducing establishment costs.
Cimino Cole suggested that, being a national body, the trust may be ideally positioned to head up the on-going open-ground trials and develoment.
Eighty-one million to play with
An unanticipated but extremely pertinent contribution was that of
Lake Taupö Protection Trust chief executive Graeme Fleming, who explained the trust’s work encouraging and assisting land use change to reduce the nitrogen impact the lake.
The trust’s funding of $81 million over 15 years comes from the Ministry for the Environment, Environment Waikato and the Taupö District Council—it is clearly hoped that by spending large sums now, Taupö can avoid
going bottom up in the manner of the Rotorua Lakes.
While Graeme Fleming spoke, every person present must have been marvelling at how germane the open-ground project was the goal of assisting land use change, whether it be for two-tier farm forestry, sustainable indigenous timber production or pure indigenous restoration. Subsequently, Dr David Bergin has discussed the open-ground project with Graeme Fleming and protection trust director John Kneebone.
Sustainable Farming Fund
Helen Percy, the project’s Sustainable Farming Fund advisor, was introduced.
The open-ground project will have corrected any misconception held by attendees that the agriculture and forestry ministry’s sustainability fund is only about farming—high time it was renamed the Sustainable Agriculture and Forestry Fund.
Action plan milestone
The open-ground project was a direct response to the harbour’s elevated sediment accumulation rate, but bizarrely was initially attacked by Auckland Regional Council’s then rural land management team leader—under the misapprehension than indigenous plants could not be bare-rooted.
Consequently, the whole-hearted participation by Mahurangi Action Plan project leader, Kim Morresey, in the open day was a milestone in itself.
Emissions trading
Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry’s Patrick Hawinkles was last up, charged with the tall order of explaining which credits applied to trees planted when and under what circumstances, and given only a short amount of time in which to do it—lunch was smelling good on the barbecue and the temperature was plummeting.
It would be nice to report that Patrick was successful and that everyone was soon
au fait with the intricacies of the sustainable forestry schemes, but the subject demands fierce concentration of the mind—the saving grace was a
flowchart that shows how they fit together.
Only those accustomed to Dr David Bergin’s hand’s-on approach to science would have been unsurprised that son and field assistant, Michael, and youngest daughter
Natalie, were responsible for laying on the hearty fare of sausages and salad in bread rolls, and more home-baking.
To cloak the land in native trees
In its slogan, Taupö Native Plant Nursery has nicely evoked the Mäori feather cloak.
It is axiomatic that the steep erodible Mahurangi harbourscape needs its cloak of indigenous forest restored. Certainly there is room for exotic trees like olives and for grape vines, but much of the harbourscape terrain is so steep that only a substantial forest canopy will sufficiently tame the surface flows—the surface flows that carry soil inexorably into the harbour, smothering much of the fauna that should be thriving there.
The un-acclimatised northern attendees could have used a feather cloak each, as additional insulation from the Taupö cold and wet, as the forty filed off for a tour of nursery.
Philip Smith explained the propagating facilities and the efforts the nursery makes to provide eco-sourced plants, and the importance of planning if eco-sourcing is to be deliverable—an opportune time to also stress the greater degree of planning bare-root methods require—the plants having a finite life once lifted from the open-ground nursery beds.
The Ömaha Pilot Open-Ground Indigenous Plant Nursery is a Sustainable Farming Fund project.
Spot the Difference: Mahurangi mänuka grown in, left, plastic pot, middle, open-ground bed, and, right, in root trainer.
Familiar Phenomena: Container-grown karamü displaying the excessive root circling that can condemn a tree to premature catastrophic failure—perhaps not critical in a shrub, but a dead loss in the case of a sustainable timber tree.
No Shortage of Samples: Philip Smith digs up another open-ground plant to demonstrate the consistantly vigorous root growth.
Awahou River Restoration: The northern contingent visit Jaap and Sue van Dorsser and other members of the team reclaiming the riparian margin from blackberry and convolvulus.