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WARWICK SMITH/Stuff
Pine forests have been planted in large parts of rural Tararua. (File photo.)
Wairarapa MP Kieran McAnulty doesn’t think a proposal to give councils more control over where carbon forests are planted is too late to save rural communities.
Farms being converted into forestry due to rising carbon costs has been an issue in many rural parts of New Zealand recently, as farming jobs and people have disappeared from small districts.
Earlier this month the Government opened public consultation on how forests were managed through the National Environmental Standards for Plantation Forestry.
This included giving councils more control over where forests were planted, managing the effects of exotic carbon forestry on nature, improving wildfire management in all forests and confirmation the permanent forest category of the Emissions Trading Scheme will open on January 1.
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Tararua has been one of those areas where hill country previously used for sheep-and-beef farming has had pine trees planted on it.
McAnulty is the MP for Wairarapa, which covers Tararua, and he was pleased his advocacy had started to pay off. He believed the changes would benefit Tararua.
“Permanent and carbon forestry is a complex issue. We need to plant trees to combat climate change, but when this leads to full farm conversions at the expense of our rural communities this benefits no-one.”
McAnulty didn’t think it was too late and just because parts of the region had already been planted in forestry it wasn’t a reason to do nothing.
He said he came up with the policy at the last election, the only person to do so, because he could see how rural communities were being affected by forestry.
“There’s been a lot of concern, a lot of confusion as to what the drivers of this are. We need to be clear, the reason people are planting trees for carbon is down to the [Emissions Trading Scheme].
“There was a misunderstanding there was a carve out for forestry in the Overseas Investment Office. That was for plantation forestry, not for carbon forests. The rule’s not there to incentivise this behaviour.”
He said giving councils control over where forestry would be planted would make converting a farm into forestry a consentable activity.
“If they look at an area suitable to forestry, I can’t imagine it will cause much of a problem. If they’re going to convert large swathes of land into forestry the council will say no.”
He encouraged people to submit feedback about the proposal.
Tararua mayor Tracey Collis said she wanted to see more information about what the scheme would look like.
“When they say the councils are able to decide based on social and economic factors specifically to the area and community, for me, we’d be needing some guidelines in which to make those decisions … they say they want to get the right tree in the right place, but we say with the right management.
“Pest control is a big thing people want to see.”
She said the horse had bolted in their district.
“There has been a significant amount of farms go into carbon forestry. It was very quick without the policy in place.”
She said a lot of productive land had been lost, but did stress Tararua had always had production forestry.
She said it had to be balanced and this process would provide balance. The most important part was getting people involved so the guidelines were correct.
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