TV Campaign Airs Wood’s Environmental Credentials

1 February 2008
The New Zealand forest and timber processing industries are taking their environmental message to the public next week in a first-ever multi-million dollar advertising campaign.
Generically branded ‘NZ Wood’, the campaign puts forests and wood at the front line of the fight against climate change.
The program will be driven by industry and co-funded by industry and government.
NZ Wood is supported by the New Zealand Forest Owners Association, the Wood Processors Association, the Pine Manufacturers Association, the Timber Design Society, the Douglas-fir Association and the New Zealand Farm Forestry Association.
“NZ Wood supports cutting plantation forests and using the wood, which in turn encourages further planting and sucks up more CO₂,” says program manager Geoff Henley.
“The TV commercials are a captivating, expansive look at forests and wood, taking the viewer on a journey from our reliance on diminishing resources such as fossil fuels, to the use of wood in all parts of our lives, and finishing with a breathtaking view of the largest man-made forest in the world – the Kaingaroa plantations in the Central North Island.”

NZ Must Be ‘Positive’ About Tree Planting

If New Zealand wants more forests it must allow those who plant trees to benefit from the environmental services they provide.
NZ Forest Owners Association president Peter Berg said the 2007 State of the Environment report highlighted increases in carbon and nitrogen emissions arising from the intensification of land use, along with the positive attributes of plantation forestry.
“However, the area under plantation forestry is declining,” Berg said. “As the report notes, this has implications for New Zealand’s greenhouse gas profile and may also affect flood management, soil nutrients and health, biodiversity and hill country erosion.
He said if land owners were forced to retain existing trees on inappropriate sites, they would be reluctant to pant new forests for fear that their future land management options would be taken away by regulators or parliament.
Berg says the report highlights how the Resource Management Act has been used very successfully to reduce pollution from factories and farm effluent ponds, because local bodies have applied the polluter-pays principle.
“In contrast, when it comes to land management – an area which environment secretary Hugh Logan identified, along with transport, as one of two major problem areas – excess carbon and nitrogen emissions have largely been dealt with by regulation.
“Forest owners have been forced to keep trees on inappropriate land to offset the carbon emissions of others. In the Taupo catchment, forest owners are locked into their existing land uses in perpetuity regardless of the economics of doing so.”
Berg says punitive policies such as these lead to perverse outcomes, like the mass deforestation that had occurred in the last two years.
“Planted forests of both exotic and native trees have a huge potential to help improve the New Zealand environment, but they mustn’t be treated like public property, otherwise no-one will plant trees.

Warning: No Visitors In Working Forests

Despite industry protests, the Queensland Government has continued to promote visitor access in the state’s plantation forests.
Industry warned in May last year that removing the “permit to traverse” system and encouraging visitor access to forests would endanger lives.
As feared, an incident in early January could easily have ended tragically when a member of the public entered a harvesting site in the Beerburrum plantation forest and walked up to a harvesting machine.
Chief executive of Timber Queensland Rod McInnes says enough is enough – “our forest harvesting operators abide by a code of harvesting practice to ensure safety – appropriate safety and high-visibility clothing with constant radio communication between harvesters and haulers.
“It’s not good enough for the Government to turn a blind eye to members of the public stumbling about our workplace. A return to the access permit system and ceasing promotion of visitor access to working forests is required before someone is killed.”

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