The planting native forests toolkit

Project Status: Current

This project aims to provide a free comprehensive online toolkit from planning to implementation for those planting native forests to meet multiple objectives from environmental to sustainable production.

A suite of calculators on productivity, carbon sequestration and economics for planting and managing native forest will be generated from the Tāne’s Tree Trust Indigenous Plantation Database. This is New Zealand’s largest national database of planted natives comprising 15,000 trees and shrubs 5-100 years old and will be used to develop growth and carbon models as part of a freely available web-based interactive toolkit. This will allow businesses and landowners to calculate how much native forest they need to plant to offset carbon.

The toolkit will allow users to input site factors and explore a range of planting scenarios to meet objectives within resources. It will include case studies and a reference database with links to best-practice planting, management and monitoring guidelines.

Carbon Sequestration by Native Forest – Setting the Record Straight.

In November 2021, Pure Advantage and Tānes Tree Trust add an additional layer to the discourse for more native forest, with new research for the O Tātou Ngāhere programme of work; Carbon Sequestration by Native Forest – Setting the Record Straight.

In a first for research of this type about planted native forest, the paper confirms that while radiata pine is faster growing, the carbon sequestration difference between radiata pine and well-managed planted native forest is closer than previously thought, and that native reforestation and regeneration brings extensive benefits to New Zealand’s climate and ecosystem over time.

Forest growers estimate carbon stock for the Emissions Trading Scheme through the Carbon Look-up tables from the Ministry for Primary Industries. The current Carbon Look-up table for natives is currently accurate only for naturally regenerating kanuka/manuka shrubland*.

We believe this new research from Tāne’s Tree Trust gives the Carbon look-up tables the option to include planted native forest as well as regenerating native. The data also indicates that, while lower than planted native forest, naturally regenerating native forest can still achieve good levels of sequestration over a long timeframe with the inclusion of tree species such as totara, rimu, kauri and kahikatea.

Read or download the full paper here.