Secret agenda for forestry plans?

Press, 13 July 1985, Page 16

Secret agenda for forestry plans?

By

OLIVER RIDDELL

in Wellington Concern is held that the Government might be seeking to introduce an Exotic Forestry Corporation by stealth. A spokesman for the Institute of Foresters, Mr Prestley Thomson, said that having a commercial forestry corporation was the “secret agenda” that lay behind the Government’s plans to prune responsibility for native forests from the Forest Service. Yet this consequence of reform environmental administration was not being discussed at the public meetings being held up and down the country by the Minister for the Environment, Mr Marshall, and his Parliamentary Under-Secre-tart, Mr Woollaston. Mr Thomson said he had attended public meetings held in Levin and Masterton so far. There had been a full discussion of the report of the working party on environmental administration, as the Government had promised. But there had not been any discussion of the nature of the forestry structure that would be left behind if the Forest Service indeed lost responsibility for native forests, he said. Yet it seemed automatic that if the Forest Service lost native forests it would become a commercial enterprise. Public discussion on the merits and demerits

of this was needed just as much as on the general topic of environmental administration. Mr Marshall had assured the meetings that the two issues were not linked directly. But if the resulting commercial enterprise were to be cost-efficient, Mr Thomson said, it would have to give up all the non-commer-cial activities involving exotic timber that occupied so much of its budget and the time of its staff. For example, who would become responsible for plantings to retain water and soil values, or to stabilise sand dunes, or other noncommercial work, if the Forest Service were to become a forestry corporation, he asked? In reality, all forestry decisions were linked. It was important that decisions on the future of the Forest Service not be made as an after-thought once a decision had been made on whether it should lose control of native forests. It would be much easier to move on to the second ■ issue once the first was out of the way, and so now would be a good time to be having public discussions on the second as well as the first, Mr Thomson said. He said the public meetings he had attended had not led to any strong expression of opinion for or against the recommenda-

tions, of the working party on environmental administration, and indeed had been “pretty bland.” However, the institute was worried about four aspects of the recommendations. • If adopted, it would mean the end of commercial use of native forests. He accepted that rare and valuable species such as kauri, rimu, or kahikatea ought to be special. But New Zealand still had between one and two million hectares of large lowland beech forests which might be commercially viable and which could regenerate. Those forests ought not to be “locked away.” • The reorganisation of all environmental administration, as proposed, would be extremely costly in terms of money, personnel upheaval, and loss of cohesion in work being done. • It was doubtful that reorganisation was needed. Any forest needing protection could be protected, specially with a Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment to oversee the Forest Service and other Government agencies, without complete reorganisation. • The proposals of the working party would lead to environmental disintegration rather than integration. Mr Thomson represented the interests of the institute at the meetings he attended, but is also a retired Direc-tor-General of Forests.