Forest Talk

The first reading of the Climate Change Response (Emissions Trading Scheme—Forestry Conversions) Amendment Bill received strong support in Parliament late last month.

“This Bill is about protecting our most valuable land that grows food for export and sustains rural communities,” says Forestry Minister, Todd McClay.

“For too long, ETS incentives have driven the wrong outcomes for our rural sector.

“Once farms are planted in trees as a res..... more

Scion programmes aimed at Increasing water flow in New Zealand, as well as wildfire knowledge and preparedness, have received a second round of government funding for collaborative research with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

Some $2.35 million from the government’s Catalyst fund will enable Scion to undertake three-year research programmes into observing water flows through forests and investigating wildfire and drought ri..... more

Selwyn is considering a policy of “replacing one tree with at least two” after Rolleston was shown to have one of the lowest numbers of trees for a town in the country.

This comes a week after a study was released by the University of Canterbury’s School of Forestry, led by Professor Justin Morgenroth and Dr Ning Ye.

It showed Rolleston’s tree canopy cover was 7.9%, ranking it 77 out of 78 cities and towns in the study.

Other Canterbury t..... more

The fifth annual John Deere Technician of the Year Awards honour the essential work technicians do every day to support industries critical to New Zealand’s economy and rural and regional communities.

A trailblazing female apprentice, a part-time farmer, an accomplished linguist, and a technician who prides himself on his ‘Kiwi ingenuity’ are the four New Zealand John Deere technicians who have earned their place in this year’s prestigious Technician..... more

A 43-person Fire and Emergency New Zealand taskforce adds to the existing assistance in Canada this week for the Manitoba province’s wildfire response.

A seven-person specialist team is now joined by an agency representative, two taskforce leaders and eight five-person arduous firefighting crews.

Like the specialist team, they will be deployed for approximately five weeks.

Canada is currently experiencing a severe wildfire season and all ..... more

Fatigue is a big risk in forestry, especially for manual tree-fallers. Fatigue can hurt because tired people are more likely to make poor decisions. So, it’s really important to manage fatigue and there are many different ways to do that. 

Recently we caught up with Alan Paulson, to talk about how he manages the risk of fatigue in his manual felling crew. Alan, who owns Tairāwhiti Timber Training, is a Safetree Certification faller and runs a sp..... more