A new era of risk – climate, forestry & smart regulation

The recent storm events in the Nelson-Tasman region have shown us we are now living in a climate-changed world. Climate adaptation is no longer optional – it is essential. So too is the need for robust environmental regulation that enables us to evolve our practises in response to increasingly complex and severe weather.

The initial estimate of 4,000 hectares of wind-thrown affected forests in the Nelson-Tasman region has crept up to 7,500 hectares now, with the economic impact for forestry likely exceeding $100 million. Many of these forests were in their third rotation, meaning over 50 years of productive forestry occurred without an event – or damage – of this scale.

While tree age alone does not determine vulnerability to windthrow or storm damage, factors such as tree height, stem slenderness, wind intensity and topography are all dynamics that must be given extra consideration as the landscape we operate in continues to shift and morph. These forests will need months, if not years, of recovery and restoration efforts, plus intensive planning to mitigate an increased likelihood of subsequent events causing damage to our forest assets.

As I write this, more bad weather has met the top of the South. Our thoughts are with the communities that have taken a battering over the last few weeks.

Continued investment in science and research will be key for understanding, learning from and adapting to this new ‘norm’. The New Zealand Forest Owners Association (NZFOA) is working with central government, councils and local foresters to collect data from the Nelson-Tasman storm to inform how we can best respond to and plan for future adverse events to improve our overall resilience.

As we confront the realities of climate change, it’s not only science and on-the-ground planning that will shape our response – regulation has a crucial role to play. Well-designed, adaptive policy is one of the most powerful tools we must ensure that forest management practices evolve in line with the growing environmental risks we face. Just as we must base our response to storm impacts on evidence and research, so too must our regulatory systems reflect the complexity and variability of the landscapes we manage.

The scale of regulatory reform proposed in the national direction package for the Resource Management Act has been a lot for everyone to wade through but of particular interest has been the changes to the slash management regulations the National Environmental Standards for Commercial Forestry (NES-CF).

The NZFOA supports the changes that are being proposed to move to a risk management system that will be incorporated in the harvest management plans by looking more closely at slash mobilisation risk rather than a single number for what’s left on the slope.

This more nuanced system would allow us to better account for site-specific variables and respond more effectively to the escalating intensity of storm events, particularly in high-risk forestry environments.

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Source & image credit: Dr Elizabeth Heeg, NZ Forest Owners Association