Why proposed changes to forestry rules won’t solve the ‘slash’ problem

The biggest environmental problems for forest trade plantations in the steep country in New Zealand are the discharge of oblique bars (woody debris left after logging) and sediments from clear crops.

Over the past 15 years, there have been 15 convictions of forest companies for discharge from obsessive bars and sediments in rivers, on earth and along the coastline.

These discharges are supposed to be controlled by national environmental standards for commercial forestry, which establish environmental rules for forestry activities such as forest roads and clear harvest. Standards are part of the Resource Management Act (RMA), which the government reform.

The government revised the rules for the management of standards in 2023 after the Cyclone Gabrielle. But he now consults a proposal to further modify standards due to the problems of cost, uncertainty and conformity.

We believe that the proposed changes fail to approach the main reasons for the releases of oblique bar and sediment.

We have recently analyzed five convictions of forest companies under RMA for illegal rejections. On the basis of this analysis, which has been accepted for publication in the New Zealand Journal of Forestry, we argue that standards should set limits to the size and location of clear areas on land sensitive to erosion.

Why the courts condemned five forest companies

In the aftermath of the destructive storms in the Gisborne district in June 2018, five forest companies were convicted of violation of RMA for rejections of oblique bar and sediments of their clear harvest operations. These discharges result from landslides and collapsed earthworks (including roads).

There have been a lot of criticism of the performance of forestry during these storms and subsequent events such as Cyclone Gabrielle. However, little attention was paid to the reason why the courts decided to condemn the forest companies for violation of the RMA.

The court decisions clearly explain why the discharges of the sediment and objects took place, why the forest societies were at fault and which can be done to prevent these rejections in the future on land subject to erosion.

New Zealand plantation forest areas are classified for its sensitivity to erosion using a four-color scale, from green (low) to red (very high). Due to the strong sensitivity to erosion, additional RMA (consents) authorizations for earthworks and harvesting are necessary in red classified areas.

New Zealand, only 7% of planting forests are on red land. 17% additional is on orange lands (high sensitivity). But in the Gisborne district, 55% of commercial forests are on red land. This is why trying to manage erosion is such a problem in the forests of Gisborne.

Key results of forest cases

In the five cases, the convicted companies consent Consent from the Gisborne District Council to build forest roads and large clear areas covering hundreds, even thousands of hectares.

A significant part of the discharges of sediment and objects is from landslides that have been prepared to occur after high -scale clear harvests. But as the harvests were legal, these landslides were not relevant to the decision to condemn.

Instead, all the convictions concerned the failures of compliance where the forest roads and the newspaper storage areas collapsed or that the oblique bar was not properly eliminated, even if they only partially contributed to the collective sediments and the downstream bar discharges.

The court concluded that:

1. Clear harvest on land very sensitive to erosion required absolute compliance with the conditions for consent of resources. Construction defects correctly roads or management have contributed to discharge from oblique bars and downstream sediment.
2. Even with absolute compliance, a clear discharge on these lands was always risky. Indeed, an important part of the discharges was due to legal activity to reduce trees and eliminate them, leaving the ground vulnerable to landslides and other erosion.

The second conclusion is critical. This means that even if forest companies are fully compliant with standards and consents, Slash and sediment discharges can still occur after clear detention. And if this happens, advice can force companies to clean these discharges and prevent them from reproducing.

This is not a hypothetical scenario. Recently, the Gisborne District Council managed to apply to the Environment Court for application prescriptions requiring the cleaning of oblique bar deposits and the sanitation of harvest sites. If forest companies do not comply, they can be held by the court.

Regulations are not only administrative formalities

This illustrates a major problem with standards that apply to forest-sensitive forest lands in New Zealand, not only in the Gisborne district. The regulations are not only “screen paperons”. They provide certainty to companies that, as long as they comply, their activities should be free from legal proceedings and application.

Court decisions and council implementation measures show that forest companies can deal with considerable legal risks, even if they comply with regulatory requirements for earthworks and harvest.

Clear forests on land subject to erosion are a bad rain storm away from the disaster. But with a well planned and careful harvest of small forest areas, this risk can be maintained at a tolerable level.

However, the standards and proposed modifications do not require small clear areas on land subject to erosion. If this gap is not fixed, communities and ecosystems will continue to bear the weight of discharges from clear -scale clear harvests.

To solve this problem, standards must proactively limit the size and location of clear areas on land subject to erosion. This will address the main cause of catastrophic discharges and forest sediments, protecting communities and ecosystems. And this will allow forest companies to plan their crops with greater confidence than they will not be subject to legal action.

This article is republished from the conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.