WHY THE BEECH SCHEME IS AN
ECOLOGICAL AND ECONOMIC NONSENSE
1. The leaked plans contain one of
conservationists' worst fears of the last 25 years:
an industrial scale plan to exploit West Coast beech
forests.
2. Timberlands' "beech/ rimu" scheme
would be larger in scale than all other native forest
logging in New Zealand put together. It would push
new roading and logging into 98,000 ha of public
beech and rimu forest.
3. The scheme will more than triple the amount of
native forest logging currently occurring on the West
Coast and re-invigorate an industry that was winding
down. Unless the scheme is stopped up to 300,000
beech trees and an unknown number of rimu could be
logged each year.
4. Less than 15 % of New Zealand's lowland forest
remains. Most of the beech and beech/ rimu forests
managed by Timberlands are lowland forest below 700
metres.
5. The logging is occurring or planned in forests
which the Department of Conservation has identified
as having high conservation values and which provide
habitat for species threatened with extinction such
as kaka, great spotted kiwi, blue duck, parakeets and
several native fish species. DoC has identified 92 %
of the forests Timberlands controls as having
"high" or "medium" conservation
values.
6. Timberlands is targeting the best forest areas
first. Logging has begun at Station Creek in the
Maruia forests, described by the Department of
Conservation as providing "outstanding wildlife
habitat" because of the abundance and diversity
of native birds. The Maruia forests are some of the
most ecologically important of the beech forests
controlled by Timberlands.
7. The "sustainable" beech scheme will
involve logging more trees per hectare than occurs in
the destructive logging Buller (e.g. Charleston
forest). In Buller, 14% of merchantable trees are
felled (PQ No 1761, 16 July 1998) compared to 10-12 %
in the proposed beech scheme (Overview Plan, section
5.3). In the beech scheme, for every log taken to the
sawmill, another two trees can be felled and left to
rot in the forest in what is described as
"improvement felling".
8. The scheme is a re-hash of the discredited
Forest Service proposals of the 1970s and 1980s and
involves a large number of trees being felled to
produce very little quality timber. Instead of being
chipped as proposed in the 1970s, defective timber
trees will now be felled to waste in the forest. The
language has changed. Instead of "selective
logging" Timberlands uses "selection
harvest" but the damage caused by intensive
logging remains.
9. The leaked plans show up the deception in
Timberlands' PR claims that the beech scheme simply
involves logging "an average of one tree per
hectare per year". Averages over large areas
deliberately obscure the much more intensive logging
which occurs in the much smaller forest
"compartments" where logging is
concentrated each year. At each site, groups of 2 to
10 trees will be felled for sawlogs. Sites can be
less than 50 metres apart.
10. Government proposals to consult the public are
a sham. The plans show that Government has already
approved the first year of logging in the
"Maruia Working Circle" which began on 1
April 1998. Public consultation (due to be announced
next month) will only occur after the beech scheme
has started .
11. The scheme is likely to be an uneconomic.
There is little demand for beech as a timber. The
scheme is production driven by foresters in
Timberlands, rather than market driven by any demand
for beech as a timber. In its 1998 Annual Report
Timberlands acknowledges that beech is difficult to
mill, has a high wastage factor, low recovery rates,
and a costly and protracted drying process, and that
it has been impossible to determine the "market
depth" for beech timber.
12. Plantation timbers are readily available as
alternatives to beech and rimu and are replacing them
in both price and market acceptance. The same volume
of timber (100,000 cubic metres) which Timberlands
seeks to produce annually from the beech scheme could
be provided by 11,500 ha of plantation pine.
13. Commercially, Timberlands is a failure. It
survives because of its cash flow from rimu logging
and because it is protected by Government from market
realities. It pays a negligible royalty for native
forest logging ($165,000 in the 1997/98 financial
year) and little income tax ($26,000 in 1997/98). It
will pay a royalty of only $5.00 per cubic metre for
logs sent to mills and nothing for trees logged to
waste as part of the "improvement felling".
14. The company has not paid a dividend for eight
years and is only able to this year because it has
sold its loss making spaghnum moss subsidiary.
Timberlands admits that it faces declining sales,
margins, and profitability (1998 Annual Report). It
is seeking a cash injection from Government for an
end to the Buller over-cut.
15. The management plans are biased and
inconsistent. They admit no doubts or problems over
their untested proposals and skim over the lack of
information about much of the natural life in the
forests proposed for logging. On one document, the
stated objective is to "improve wildlife
habitat" (Maruia Operations Plan 1988-99 p7) but
in another it is merely to maintain wildlife habitat
"as much as possible" (Maruia Sustainable
Management Plan, p 42) The plans lack credibility.
16. The Ministry for the Environment's 1997 State
of the Environment report concluded that
"biodiversity decline is New Zealand's most
pervasive environmental issue", and that two of
the major pressures on indigenous biodiversity are
insufficient habitat in lowland areas and the
declining quality of many of the remaining land and
freshwater habitats. Timberlands' beech scheme will
destroy and degrade further areas of lowland forest
habitat.
9 September 1998
Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society
Native Forest Action
back to the
top
Ecological
assessment of the Timberlands
logging plans
Executive Summary
The Department of Conservation
(1997) has said, "The most important
conservation imperative for the survival of
threatened species and representative ecosystems on
the West Coast is the protection and restoration of
low altitude ecosystems, and especially those which
link or buffer existing protected natural
areas."
Conservation assessment
The Department of Conservation
(1997) has identified 92 % (or 120,829 ha) of the
132,000 ha) of the indigenous forests controlled by
Timberlands as having "high" or
"medium" conservation values deserving
protection under DoC's national criteria for forest
protection, virtually all being the high priority low
altitude ecosystems. Logging will destroy or
seriously degrade those values. The beech scheme
involves 75% of the forests managed by Timberlands.
Impact of logging
The plans establish
"permissible" logging levels using a
logging and management model prepared for tropical
forests. In the absence of any research base, a
substantial "leap of faith" is required in
applying the model to New Zealand conditions. The
plans understate the contribution which logging, new
roading and clearings makes to habitat fragmentation
and reducing the presence, abundance and distribution
of wildlife.
Token reserves
Some small areas are proposed to be
set aside as reserves. In the Maruia Forest the
reserve areas include limestone bluffs and outcrops
which are too steep to log without major erosion
problems and difficult access for logging crews,
rather than areas which are important for birdlife.
Natural forests into plantations
Parts of the Paparoa and Grey
valley beech forests, comprising a substantial part
of the beech scheme total area, have been logged in
the past and are now regenerating strongly.
Production thinning is proposed to remove up to 12 %
of the standing volume of the forest to improve
timber quality. Production thinning will turn beech
forests in beech plantations, changing their natural
structure, species composition, growth regime.
No commitment to predator
control
Timberlands' public relations
material gives the strong impression that the company
will fund extensive predator control from its logging
operations. The beech scheme plans, however, include
no commitments to any active predator control
programmes even though commercial logging has already
begun in the Maruia forests.
Impact of roading
Extensive new roading is proposed.
Some 30 km of new roading and 22 new landing sites
are proposed in just two of the four blocks in the
Maruia forests. (Maruia SM Plan p 64). New roading
will fragment now intact habitat and degrade areas
with high conservation values.
Impact on ecology
The plans and prescriptions pay
little attention to the effects which removing
thousands of logs annually will have on nutrient
capital, nutrient cycling, and on soil organic
matter. Log removal is a major change in the natural
forest dynamics and has the potential for significant
adverse effects on ecosystem functioning.
Impact on wildlife
The beech forests contain
outstanding native wildlife. No monitoring is
proposed of the impacts of logging on the wildlife
values of the Maruia forest (Maruia SM Plan, p 89).
This would enable Timberlands to avoid acknowledging
the impacts on birdlife. Riparian vegetation along
streams less than 3 metres wide will be logged. The
impacts of this on aquatic ecosystems and natural
character are poorly described.
Lack of consultation
The company claims that "there
has been widespread public consultation at every
stage " (Overview p xiv). It has consistently
refused to make available its draft management plans
or any of the reports and wildlife and other survey
reports on which they are based. Commercial scale
beech logging has begun in the Maruia forests without
any independent scientific or public assessment of
the beech management plans or any opportunity for
public consultation as promised under the West Coast
Accord.
Beech scheme yet another native
forestry experiment
The scheme repeats the discredited
"suck it and see" experimentation done by
the NZ Forest Service with such abortive results in
the selective logging and clear-felling of West Coast
rimu forests. "Selective logging" has just
been replaced by "selection harvest". The
research needed to provide a solid foundation for
Timberlands' claims of "sustainable
management" has not been done. The beech scheme
would be a huge experiment.
