On a misty morning in June just north of Turangi, Gordon Flight from Flight Logging brought down the last tree in the Central North Island forests managed by NZ Forest Managers (NZFM) that had been damaged in February 2023 by Cyclone Gabrielle.
When Gordon set down the tree ready for extraction, it marked the end of an extraordinary 16-month salvage operation for NZFM and all the harvesting and trucking contractors that helped with the work.
Not only did they manage to complete what would normally be six years’ worth of harvesting work in 16 months, they did it safely. In fact, NZFM’s safety statistics actually improved significantly during salvage work.
“From the outset there was plenty of discussion around having very clear objectives for the team during the salvage operation,” says NZFM General Manager, John Hura. “These were to minimise the value loss to our forest owners, and to do the work safely. That was driven both by the NZFM board, as well as our senior management team.”
When the cyclone hit, it damaged about 6,500 hectares of Central North Island forests, which equates to about 3.4 million cubic metres of wood – or about 13,000 rugby fields. Much of the damage was to the most valuable stands, those aged 20-years and older.
Salvaging the snapped and uprooted stems was a race against time because the longer they lay on the ground, the more they would degrade and lose value as sap stain and decay set in. It required NZFM to massively scale up its operations, and to do it quickly.
To read more, get your copy of the September 2024 edition of NZ Logger magazine, on sale from 2 September. Check the link on this page to subscribe to either a printed or digital copy (or both).
