Normalising Native Forestry

Project Status: Completed

Introduction

The final year of the three-year Normalising Native Forestry Programme (NNF), supported by The Tindall Foundation (TTF) and managed by Tāne’s Tree Trust (TTT), has been completed. The aim of this three-year programme of applied research and technology transfer was to develop and provide tools, resources, and advice to support native forestation at scale in Aotearoa.

This programme addressed the urgent need for science-based information and technical advice for establishing native forest at scale to address climate change and environmental degradation. It focused on working with nature, demonstrating managed regeneration to cost-effectively establish native forest at scale, and providing options for sustainable management of nature-based native forestry.

Workstreams

Research, collaboration and information sharing was completed across six workstreams.

Workstream 1. Working with Nature - native forestation at landscape scale

With an estimated million hectares of marginal land that requires recloaking in permanent native forest to meet improved land use and downstream benefits, there has been a significant shift in the approach to establishing native forest at scale. The cost of planting a diverse, native forest, including tall tree species, averages about $20,000 per hectare, so planting alone will not be cost-effective or viable. Establishment of native forest at scale requires working with nature by encouraging natural regeneration. Planting will still be needed but we must be more strategic and utilise more innovative ways to assist natural reversion. Also, factors that prevent the establishment of native forest require management to promote natural reversion at scale. This includes pest animal control, providing local seed sources of key high-forest species that are locally rare by establishing seed islands and other forms of supplementary planting, and ideally, control of introduced bird predators that limit vectors for spreading seed.

Projects that have been supported by this workstream and tools and guidelines developed include:

• Managed regeneration – Demonstrating concepts of assisted regeneration on marginal hill country as cost-effective methods including supplementary or enrichment planting, along with integrating with other factors important in establishment of natives such as pest animal control.
• Demonstration planting sites – Continuing existing trials comparing planting practices and new treatments for establishment of natives at scale. NNF has supported establishment of seed islands as demonstration trial sites across a range of landscapes with different forest types and management histories. To date, 12 sites from Northland to Southland have been established with iwi, private landowners, local authorities, other environmental NGOs and corporate investors.
• Integrating natives into lowlands – We have advocated for planting within intensively farmed lowland landscapes including ecological corridors, wildlife ‘stepping stones’, shelterbelts, riparian zones, and enhancement of remnants.
• New technologies and treatments – We have investigated various technologies to establish native forest at scale, such as direct seeding and drone deployment (via other organisations), planting low-cost small planting stock, and comparing various planting densities.
• Monitoring success – Working with partner organisations, we have developed a practical, science-based field monitoring system to quantify the success of planting and regeneration programmes, including mapping of planting sites.
• Online publication of a new series of factsheets – We have provided the latest, best practice information on restoration and management of native forest establishment including seed collection, site preparation, species selection to match site requirements and meet multiple objectives, planting design, the concept of seed islands, encouraging natural regeneration, converting exotic forest to native, and monitoring and maintenance. With support from One Billion Trees, 18 new factsheets have been published and are available free online.
• Videos on best practice native forestry – NNF provided co-funding support alongside the Department of Conservation Community Conservation Fund for a project on promoting best-practice establishment and management of native forest for environmental and production purposes. Over 20 videos have been completed and are freely available, covering the basics of planting and early management of native forests to integrating natives across farmed landscapes and options for sustainable management including continuous cover harvesting.

Workstream 2. Promoting Nature-based indigenous forestry in Aotearoa

This workstream continued from the “Building on the Northland tōtara work” work completed during the Our Forests Our Future programme. It was intended to promote the development of nature-based forestry to establish and manage long-term sustainable native forest resources for multiple benefits. Over the three- year programme period this workstream has involved:

• Carved tōtara sapwood timberSustainable harvesting of tōtara on a Pāmu (Landcorp) farm in Northland.Promoting sustainable native forest management on private land - This has included field tours with government ministers, government advisors/policy-analysts (e.g., PCE team), senior government staff (e.g., Director General of Te Uru Rākau), and regional council land management teams, and Kaipara Moana Remediation. It has also involved input into TTT’s submissions to government policy recommendation documents (e.g., on the Ministerial into Land use in Tairāwhiti, Climate Change Commission, and emission reductions plans etc.). Furthermore, general media inquiries have also resulted in favourable coverage of native forestry on private land.
• Legal impediments – Work on resolving the legal and regulatory impediments and disincentives to sustainable native forestry has continued. This included submissions on the National Policy Statement for Indigenous Biodiversity (NPSIB), Far North District Plan, and direct communications to Te Uru Rākau regarding legal and regulatory matters.
• Northland Tōtara Working Group – This involved planning and managing two sustainable harvests of tōtara on a Northland property. Convening the NTWG, has grown the database, and produced NTWG newsletters and videos to support the next phase development of the Tōtara Industry Pilot (TIP) project. It has also involved facilitating timber sales and supplying information to buyers of the remaining TIP timber.
• Technology transfer – Continued to develop and provide advice to landowners, including a book: A Practical Guide to Managing Tōtara on Private Land, replete with videos on pruning, silviculture and harvesting. Field days, workshops and conference presentations (O Tātou Ngāhere) were also delivered, along with articles in the sector journals. The results of the tōtara PSP remeasurement project were published and widely disseminated and herbicide spray trials over tōtara seedlings were also completed. These outputs all now add to the technical resources via our website.
• Sustainable management of other forest types – Promoting nature-based forestry nationwide included preparing a Sustainable Forest Management (SFM) Plan for Pāmu’s Weka Station property near Moana (Lake Brunner). Rimu, miro and kahikatea were the target species of management there.
• Collaboration – Networking and information exchanges with domestic and international stakeholders groups has occurred (e.g., Pure Advantage with Recloaking Papatūānuku, and our associate membership of PRO SILVA.
• Servicing & advice – Free advice and information on native forestry has been provided to multiple Māori trusts and landowners.

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Workstream 3. Making the most of Tāne’s Tree Trust’s databases

Tāne’s Tree Trust has the most comprehensive national database for planted native forests, which has been used to develop models and calculators. This database and associated tools are providing essential data for policy-makers, investors, and the forestry and farming sectors.

Tools and resources have been developed, tested and are now available free online for those involved in establishment and management of native forest to meet multiple cultural, social, environmental and economic purposes. These include:

• Native Forest Toolkit – A suite of four calculators that have been developed to assist those planting and managing native trees to meet multiple objectives from environmental restoration to sustainable production. The toolkit draws on scientifically robust data from the Tāne’s Tree Trust Indigenous Plantation Database. It includes the Planting and Budgeting Calculator, the Growth and Yield Calculator, the Economics Calculator and the Carbon Calculator.
• Monitoring system for planted natives – A user-friendly monitoring system was developed with Trees That Count to verify and quantify success of native planting programmes including data processing and automated production of results. This co-funded project has been completed with a user-friendly, online app now available on the TTT website, for assessing early survival and growth of planted natives.

The TTT Database has been restructured, converting it from an Excel spreadsheet system into a purpose-built relational database in Microsoft Access. This new interactive National Database for Planted and Managed Native Forest includes over 100 years of data from native forestry plantations. This system includes functions for estimating plot-level metrics such as stocking, mean top height, basal area, carbon per hectare and species diversity. Ultimately, the database system will be used to store other data collected by TTT including data from regenerating shrubland on farms, sustainably managed regenerating native forest, exotic-to-native forestry transitions, urban native forest, biodiversity data, and remeasurements and new measurements in planted native stands.

Tāne’s Tree Trust has an ongoing programme to complete the development of the database system including creating a manual of field data measurement methods, data entry forms, reporting functions and data validation routines.

This database system will be a generic tool that can be used by any forestry enterprise (native or exotic forestry) for storing plot-based measurement data and utilising the accompanying database functions for processing the data. As part of existing support, Tāne’s Tree Trust will complete the development of the database system and will retain ownership of the system, but other organisations will have access to their own data with protection of their own intellectual property.

Refer to the flow diagram showing the structure of the new Tāne’s Tree Trust Plantation Database under development.

Survey of native plantings – The national survey of indigenous plantations is set up and awaits a major co-funder for a three-year period to complete the survey of anticipated minimum 150 stands ranging in age from five to 110 years old, located nationwide. The survey will include a minimum of 50 new Permanent Sample Plots to be established at new sites. It has been nearly 15 years since the last survey of native plantations was carried out by Tāne’s Tree Trust.

Workstream 4. Incentivising landowners – an economic case for native forestation

The cost of planting natives remains a limiting factor for landowners. The business case for native forestation, therefore, relies on decreasing the costs, and also compensating landowners for the non-timber values that accrue to the wider community, but do not currently have a market value. The Climate Change Commission’s advice to Government includes creation of incentives for establishing native forest. Progress on various initiatives during Year 3 of this project included:

• Valuing native ecosystems on farms – Tāne’s Tree Trust is part of an inter-agency project valuing the provision of ecosystem services on private land. This project is funded by a MPI SFFF grant, Pāmu (Landcorp), and The Tindall Foundation, and is described more fully elsewhere. It aligns with Green Loans and other financial incentives for landowners to conserve, protect and restore natural biodiversity – and the need for robust assessment systems. The pilot project involves assessing the relative quality of selected wetlands, indigenous forest, and streams across several Pāmu farm units in Northland, and quantifying the monetary value provided by ecosystem services, before and after intervention to improve ecosystem quality. The ultimate aim is to develop a robust, but readily usable web-based tool to assist landowners (or outside agents) to assess sites and translate environmental data into tangible, on-farm actions for improving ecological integrity – to satisfy financial lending organisations. This project also has applications for proposed biodiversity credit systems.
• Recognising non-timber values – The recently launched TTT toolkit includes multiple non-timber benefits, which users can enter the value for in their forest restoration projects. This will provide further impetus for developing a biodiversity incentives system for restoration and management of native ecosystems across working landscapes.
• Carbon sequestration – Ongoing collaboration with Pure Advantage in quantifying and comparing carbon sequestration for a range of planted and regenerating native forestry scenarios as an option for offsetting NZ’s greenhouse gas emissions and reducing reliance on offshore carbon credits.
• TTT economics calculator – As part of the toolkit on establishment of natives, the cost and benefits of planting and managing native forest for multiple objectives including the long-term option of specialty timber production from appropriate sites is completed and available on the TTT website.
• Biodiversity credit system – Contributed to DoC/MfE workshops exploring potential biodiversity credit systems, including a funding platform for businesses.
• Submissions – Wrote submissions for
  • Ministerial Inquiry on land use on east coast – on alternative forestry regimes for climate resilience
  • Biodiversity Incentives Scheme
  • Climate Change Commission’s (CCC) Advice to Govt on 2nd ERP (Emissions Reduction Plan), and subsequent response from Government on draft ERP2 
  • Permanent Forest Category in ETS
• Continued support and advocacy for the wider values of native forests via workshops, wānanga and communications with government agencies.
• International conference – Presented at trans-Tasman forestry conference on Investing in Natural Capital: Weaving native forest back through NZ’s landscapes. This presentation was well received. A subsequent conference paper was published in the NZ Journal of Forestry.

Workstream 5. Evaluating novel ecosystems – transitioning exotics to natives

Transitional Forestry Project Manager Meg Graeme helping with an exclosure plot fence as part of a trial.Conservation management within highly modified environments and primary production systems is necessary to complement existing areas of native forest. The concept of novel ecosystems potentially has a significant role to play in these areas. The advent of permanent carbon forests has intensified interest in managing potential transitions from exotic vegetation to native. However, it is important to understand the factors that affect native regeneration and natural succession under exotic species. It is also important to identify how we can weave more native forest into our landscapes, what new forms that may take, and how they can be managed. This workstream has involved:

• Initiating, steering, and supporting the SFFF Transitional Forestry project (see the separate project report by Meg Graeme: Transitional Forestry – Exotic to Native Forest).

• Partnering with The Connective, Ngā Pou a Tāne, and Scion, to co-deliver a project on Continuous Cover Forestry (CCF) in NZ. This included scoping the potential for exotic CCF, mixed exotic/native CCF, and indigenous CCF. See the project results here: https://www.tanestrees.org.nz/projects/close-to-nature-continuous-cover-forestry-project/

• Exploring further potential research projects on novel ecosystems and succession through environmental weeds.

• Input to TTT submission on the Permanent Forest category of the NZ Emissions Trading scheme.

Natural regeneration of indigenous understory beneath mature pines.For more information, contact [Enable JavaScript to view protected content]

Workstream 6. Collaboratively building capability

A holistic, multi-agency approach is required for native forest to be successfully established at scale. Working with other entities to tackle herbivory, bird and seed predation, and control of vigorous weeds, is a priority. Collaboration underway included:

• Technical transfer and advisory – Provision of info and advice to CCC, Parliamentary Commission for the Environment, landholders, community organisations, NGOs, local council staff, forestry companies, and ‘green entrepreneurs’.
• Partnerships in restoration of native forest – Collaboration with Trees That Count, Z Energy, Pāmu Farms, NZ Arboricultural Association, Longbush Ecological Trust, Pro Silva Continuous Cover Forestry, Te Kohaka o Tuhaitara Trust and Kaipara Moana Remediation Project to jointly promote restoration of native forest for multiple purposes, integrated with pest weed and animal control, supplementary planting and bird predator control programmes.
• Workshops to iwi, landowners, managers – Over 40 workshops and field-based events over the three years of the NNF programme with iwi and farming and forestry sectors, and for land managing agencies both private and public, focused on latest best-practice guidelines on native forestry establishment and management to meet multiple objectives. Led biodiversity modules for landholders in BOP for Integrated Farm Planning Tool. Input to Recloaking Papatūānuku initiative, including Māori leaders hui.
• National Fieldays – Participation in the National Fieldays at Mystery Creek in June 2024 as part of the TUR/MPI Forestry Hub with 40 forestry entities including NZ Farm Forestry Association, NZ Forest Owners, Forest Growers Research, Scion, forest biosecurity, native and exotic forestry consultants, native plant nurseries, Toi Ohomai Institute of Technology, wood processors, etc.
• NZ Institute of Forestry – Representation of native forestry interests on NZ Institute of Forestry (NZIF) Council. Dr Jacqui Aimers, TTT trustee, re-elected as council member of the NZ Institute of Forestry providing technical advice on native forest management and promoting collaboration between NZIF, the wider forestry sector and TTT. Input to native forestry section of NZIF handbook. Led two CPD training sessions on native forestation to NZ Institute of Forestry – over 100 in audience in-person and online.
• MPI/TUR collaboration – Various initiatives are underway to collaborate with the Ministry of Primary Industries and Te Uru Rākau farming and forestry teams in supporting farm and forestry advisors with professional development to upskill in the integration of native forestry with the wider farming and production forestry sector.
• Educational opportunities – Helped with Taiao Aronui wānanga on native forests for Māori school teachers in Rotorua District. Meeting with the National Manager and Regional Manager of Trees for Survival to explore options for TTT to provide technical support for their environmental education programme across primary and secondary schools. Contributed to PD course for maths and science teachers focused on carbon and forestry in collaboration with Maureen Howard and Green Belt Kaitiaki in Dunedin. Helped with practical components of Toi Ohomai (Polytech) Bachelor and Masters programmes on ecological restoration.

For more information on the Normalising Native Forestry Programme contact:

· TTT Office [Enable JavaScript to view protected content]