Forest Talk

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

Jim Childerstone, long-time columnist for NZ Logger, recently passed away. Along with forestry and writing, he was a man of many talents – fencer, shearer, shepherd mountaineer, keen sportsman and ‘there wasn’t much he couldn’t shoot between the eyes with his trusty 303, says his wife Margot. 

His love of nature began at an early age when living with his aunt Jeannie and uncle Kim Ferguson in  Arrowtown during the mid-forties. Kim ..... more

As part of research aimed at improving wood quality and producing materials to support New Zealand’s bioeconomy, Scion has launched the world’s first field trial of gene-edited conifer.

The Crown Research Institute has implemented the advanced gene-editing technique known as CRISPR that lets scientists turn off a specific gene within the pine’s complex genome. This helps them understand what that gene does – which in turn builds understanding of how ..... more

A new tax incentive, “Investment Boost”, that allows businesses to immediately deduct 20% of the costs of new assets (or second-hand assets purchased from overseas) – such as machinery, equipment, tools and buildings – from taxable income on top of the existing depreciation write-offs, came into effect last month. This can also be applied to investments that were started before the 22 May, if they are available for use the first time after that date.

Janus Electric Holdings, the pioneering Australian manufacturer of electric truck conversion systems and swappable battery infrastructure, commenced trading on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) last month, marking a major milestone in the commercialisation of zero-emission transport technology.

Founder and Chief Operating Officer of Janus Electric, Lex Forsyth, says following a successful $8.8 million capital raise, backed by a group of instit..... more