Slash And Forestry Management Changes Proposed
Under proposed changes to the National Environmental Standards for Commercial Forestry (NES-CF), councils would be more restricted in their ability to set harder controls. Other proposals would require all forest harvests to have 'slash mobilisation risk assessments' as part of their harvest management plans, and/or change requirements around slash removal.
Consultation on the proposed NES-CF runs until Sunday, 27 July 2025.
The SMC asked experts to comment. Previous expert reactions on proposed RMA changes around housing are available here.
Dr Steve Urlich, Senior Lecturer in Environmental Management, Lincoln University, comments:
'Stabilising hill country is a national emergency as intense rainfall occurs more frequently. Recent cyclones and atmospheric rivers have led to loss of life, profound economic and infrastructure damage, and ecosystem degradation.
'Extensive erosion can occur on pastoral hill farms and clearcut forests. Cyclone Gabrielle highlighted public concern on the damage and dangers of forest slash.
'The Government tightened the national rules around slash removal in 2023, but is proposing to relax these due to cost and compliance issues.
'However, the proposals will not effectively reduce the risk to downstream communities and environments from slash and sediment.
'Extensive harvesting on gully heads often results in large volumes of slash and broken trees being left to the elements. This is because of self-assessed health and safety risks.
'The Government needs to amend the national rules to:
Limit the size of clearcuts to <20% of catchment size.
Retire gully heads, overly steep faces, and deep incised gullies.
Prevent new plantings in these extremely high-risk areas.
Require forest roads and skids to be engineered to withstand 1-in-100 year rainfall events
'The last point will be expensive, but the human, financial and ecological costs are currently intolerable.'
No conflicts of interest.
Dr Nathanael Melia, Senior research fellow, New Zealand Climate Change Research Institute, Victoria University of Wellington; and Founding Director of Climate Prescience, comments:
'It is a positive move that the proposed amendments to the Resource Management (National Environmental Standards for Commercial Forestry) Regulations (NES-CF) is open to consultation and seems to finally offer movement in the right direction. I have been aware of slash mobalisation following extreme rainfall since the 2018 Tolaga Bay Queen's Birthday Storm. It's 2025, and we are still discussing possible legislation to address these issues.
'The too-long, didn't read version is: MfE are suggesting that they may like to consider asking forest harvest operations if they wouldn't mind taking a second look in some cases before clearing the slope, please.
'It's good to see the action required being based on a site's Erosion Susceptibility Classification rather than a set of blanket rules that would restrict the industry's good actors. However, there is nuance here, some types of erosion that harvest can exacerbate are classed as 'low risk-no further action'. Others deemed more serious suggest 'further assessment required', but with seemingly no mandate for these assessments to be independent and free from conflicts of interest, I fail to see how this is helpful.
'Other recommendations suggest that harvest planners 'should' use past rainfall observations to assess slash management needs. This reflects that these recommendations are to be self refereed, based on estimates from recorded events rather than this new extreme climate we are in, and require zero material action. Other predictive measures of slash mobilisation are mentioned and put in the too hard basket. Worse, slope features physically present and observable that are consistent with active erosion that 'channel landslide to waterway' are considered not measurable, not a predictor of risk, and only of some consequence.
'The bibliography suggests that all the relevant material is known, but only the non-confrontational evidence is used in this draft. The good news is that this is open to consultation; however, there is a risk that these weak suggestions will be seen as red tape by some operators, who will want to lobby for a less restrictive environment. Meanwhile, there are very few independent experts to argue for higher standards required to keep slash away from the public and our sensitive environment.'
No conflicts of interest.
Mark Bloomberg, Adjunct Senior Fellow, Te Kura Ngahere New Zealand School of Forestry, University of Canterbury, comments:
'Firstly, I do not wish to comment in any way on the current situation in the Tasman region. The immediate focus there is protecting life and property, urgently mitigating dangerous situations and repairing flood damage. Commentary at this stage would be inappropriate.
Part 2.2 of the Primary Sector discussion document.
'In the discussion document, the NES-CF regulations introduced in 2023 (regulations 69(5)–(7)) to manage slash on the forestry harvest cutover are considered 'costly to implement and not fit for purpose'. Proposed redress is to amend regulation 69 to require a slash mobilisation risk assessment (SMRA) for forest harvests as part of the existing harvest management plan, and/or amend regulation 69(5) to require all slash above an identified size to be removed from the forest cutover.
'These changes will not help. The problem is not 'slash' per se. The problem is the significant adverse effects of illegal discharges (slash, sediment, logging waste) from clear-felled forest lands. The proposals do not address the root causes of these illegal and catastrophic discharges from clear-felling sites on erosion-susceptible land. These root causes and their effects can be most directly avoided or mitigated by:
Setting the activity status of clear-fell harvesting and matters for control or discretion in a way that allows regulators to properly regulate the risk from discharges, with no requirement for extra stringency in regional plans, i.e. the NES-CF should provide adequate stringency.
Limiting the size and location of clear-felling coupes on erosion-susceptible land
Developing a robust nationally-based standard for identifying and mapping landslide-susceptible areas, as well as landslide hazards and discharge flow paths downslope and downstream of clear-felling areas. There would need to be a major commitment by the government and the forestry industry to train, certify, and support a cadre of professionals capable of making these assessments.'
Conflict of interest statement: 'Mark Bloomberg receives research and consultancy funding from the government's Envirolink fund and from local authorities and forestry companies. He is a member of the NZ Institute of Forestry and the NZ Society of Soil Science. He co-authored a recent article in The Conversation with Dr Steve Urlich of Lincoln University, which covers a lot of the same ground as the comments above.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Scoop
2 hours ago
- Scoop
Health And Safety Regulations To Support Science And Technology
Hon Brooke van Velden Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden is consulting on proposed changes to health and safety regulations to better support innovation in New Zealand's science and technology sector. 'As part of the wider health and safety reforms, we're clearing the way for scientific progress by reducing complexity and making it easier to understand what's required,' says Ms van Velden. 'We've heard that the current regulations don't match what university laboratories do, creating unnecessary compliance challenges. Researchers and innovators need a system that supports their work, not one that stands in the way.' I am proposing a change that aims to match hazardous substances requirements for university laboratories as well as science and technology laboratories with their actual risk. Current regulations require flammable substance laboratories to be on the ground floor. However, universities often place them on upper levels to improve fire safety and security, keeping evacuation routes clear and limiting access to hazardous materials. This approach, supported by Fire and Emergency New Zealand, does not align with how the regulations are currently written. 'I'm developing these changes to ensure they are practical and effectively support New Zealand's science and technology sector. This includes assessing whether the current laboratory design and hazardous substances storage requirements work for their laboratories. 'We'll be consulting directly with the university laboratories and science and technology laboratories. I intend to complete these changes by mid-2026.' Another key change already being consulted on aims to remove regulatory barriers to the development and use of hydrogen technologies. 'We're planning to update the rules to support the safe development and use of hydrogen technologies in a way that's flexible, future-proofed, and internationally aligned.' Officials have already conducted targeted consultation, and now we're opening it more widely to ensure all interested stakeholders have the opportunity to share their feedback. Because the current safety requirements were not developed with hydrogen in mind, they are now preventing the safe development and use of hydrogen technologies. Key changes being consulted on include: Enabling the use of hydrogen storage containers that are already in common use overseas. Establishing safety requirements for cryogenic liquid hydrogen. Introducing safety requirements for hydrogen filling stations and dispensers. 'Hydrogen technologies could transform sectors from transport to manufacturing, and these changes will help unlock that potential by removing regulatory barriers.' These changes support the Government's 2024 Hydrogen Action Plan by creating an enabling regulatory environment for hydrogen development while maintaining safety. The changes are expected to be completed by mid-2026. 'Once agreed, these updates will remove unnecessary complexity and ensure the regulatory system better supports scientific research and emerging technologies,' says Ms van Velden. 'These changes will save time and costs for businesses and workers as we cut red tape to make it easier to do business. When our Kiwi businesses thrive, there are more jobs and lower prices for all New Zealanders.' Notes: · These changes are part of the wider health and safety reform, which delivers on the ACT-National Coalition Agreement commitment to reform health and safety laws and regulations. · A summary of all the changes and major milestones:
Newsroom
7 hours ago
- Newsroom
Job cuts drop the axe on history
The Government is slashing jobs at the heart of our national identity, the Ministry for Culture and Heritage. The move will save $8 million over four years but critics argue it feels more like cultural vandalism than financial prudence. Four senior historian jobs have been axed after the ministry's funding was reduced in Budget 2025. In total, 26 roles will go. Popular history websites, including Te Ara: The Encyclopedia of New Zealand, have had a partial reprieve, but a historian and former general editor of the encyclopedia tells The Detail he has serious fears it will eventually disappear. 'What they have said is they [the websites] will sort of go into cold storage, and what that means is that eventually they wither and die because a website that's not kept up is eventually a website that does die,' says Jock Phillips, who was the chief historian at Internal Affairs before he became general editor of Te Ara. He says the changes gut vital expertise and risk eroding years of cultural knowledge. And he worries future events won't be recorded appropriately. The history websites, he says, are a crucial resource, both nationally and internationally. 'You only have to look at the user figures. Te Ara gets over four million separate users each year, a total of 13 million page views, which is a huge number and far more than, for example, the Te Papa website gets. 'New Zealand History gets over three million users each year. And the total number of page views on those two sites is about 20 million, which is an incredible amount of use. 'And an awful lot of people are enriched by that knowledge. About 70 percent of them are from within New Zealand, but one shouldn't forget the importance of the 30 percent outside New Zealand, who relish Te Ara. 'When I go overseas, people are amazed at the quality of it, there's no equivalent anywhere else, in any other country.' This week, seven history and heritage organisations put out a joint statement on the restructure decision, deeply concerned that the cuts will 'damage New Zealand's international reputation in the historical and cultural heritage sectors'. 'While not mentioned in the decision document explicitly, we are also deeply concerned about any potential for these resources to be transferred to for-profit organisations,' reads the statement from the Professional Historians' Association of New Zealand Aotearoa, New Zealand Historical Association, New Zealand History Teachers' Association, National Oral History Association of New Zealand, New Zealand Archaeological Association, Historic Places Aotearoa, and New Zealand Society of Genealogists. 'New Zealand's historical record is not a commodity to be monetised. 'These platforms must remain free and publicly accessible, as they have been for decades. Any privatisation would inevitably lead to paywalls, reduced accessibility, and the commercialisation of our collective memory.' RNZ reporter Phil Pennington, who has been covering the story, says the restructure is all about saving money – but it comes at a cost. 'Historians are really alarmed at these developments … and at the downgrading and the de-muscling of history in the ministry and at a government level. 'And they are saying it is misguided, [and] this ministry becoming a policy shop is the wrong way to go, and it will be like vandalism to our historical knowledge and our understanding.' Check out how to listen to and follow The Detail here. You can also stay up-to-date by liking us on Facebook or following us on Twitter.
Newsroom
7 hours ago
- Newsroom
What NZ's industrial policy can learn from the Aussies
Opinion: I recently spent a few days at the Institute of Australian Geographers' annual conference in Newcastle. In these straitened times, academics are increasingly (and quite rightly) asked to justify such travel, but I learned a lot from four days listening to Australian academics. Though thinking like an Australian is not something I have ever considered, save maybe as a curse endured by Aussies, it turns out there might be more to it than meets the eye. Edgy Aussie scholarship New Zealand's small contingent of academic and student geographers held their own in Newcastle, but in a shrinking number of fields and often with a less edgy scholarliness than their Australian counterparts. New Zealanders addressed some of the changes in our places and brought matters of care, concern, and Indigenous rights and perspectives to bear on local and national political debates. Many explored initiatives to strengthen participatory management and collaborative governance within and beyond the state. Australia's geographers introduced similar research to do with changing places and environments in Australia, and some also asked sharply critical questions about worlds near and far. There were papers, for example, on climate-driven economic and social collapse, detailed analyses of the geography of industrial and labour market change, the intergenerational trauma of warfare, and the border-bending effects of airborne policing of migrant boats in the Mediterranean. What all this told me is that I should harden my resolve to struggle against initiatives within and beyond my own university that I believe put universities' scholarly traditions at risk. These must be safeguarded as we pursue ways of weaving scholarship more effectively into public service. We owe this to the scholars, intellectuals, artists, discoverers, global diplomats, prophets of peace and so on – the products of our universities whose intellectual achievements we all celebrate as core to our nation. As they do in Australia. Economic powerhouse Just being in Australia was a reminder that we live 3.5 hours away from a global economic powerhouse. Our size, resource base, history, and distance from other places limits our capacity to be more like Australia. Nor can we model ourselves on Denmark, Singapore, Israel, Ireland, or Finland (the Government's comparator-du-jour). However, thinking more deeply as a geographer, making more of our proximity to Australia is a no-brainer. Despite celebrating and reaffirming our ties to Australia every 10 years on the anniversary of the Closer Economic Relations agreement, there is little evidence between those celebrations of us making any strategic leveraging of our closeness to Australia. It rarely surfaces in either mundane political debates or longer-term strategic policy. Being in Australia brought that home to me. Futures made in Australia I attended a session at the conference in which economic geographers debated the 'Future Made in Australia' policy, a 10-year, A$23 billion green transitions programme. The session celebrated a return to industrial policy in Australia after 35 years of neoliberalism, but it also asked some serious questions about contradictory objectives. For instance, panellists asked whether in its implementation the policy's transitions objectives were already being compromised by infrastructural investment to underpin a new round of resource industries. They asked how big infrastructural projects would boost an industrial ecosystem dominated by small to medium-sized firms. They asked how the policy would deal with the problems of transitioning regional workforces to the skills required of digital industries, and whether the policy would arrest the drift of regional populations to the cities, and even whether this was a desirable or appropriate goal. Australia's geographers plotted the research-led investigations necessary to address these questions – before the futures to be made turn into the mistakes of a past relived. These are precisely the questions that animated economic geography as a sub-discipline before economic policy was captured by the failed imaginaries of decades of neoliberal globalisation. Don't worry, people are mobile labour units, and their lives will be resolved and their potential maximised by competitive markets. Wrong and wrong – as geographers knew then and the Trumpian moment illustrates now, in so many ways. One long-term collaborator asked me what the debate was like across the Tasman. 'We don't have these debates,' I said with some embarrassment. 'The best we have in terms of industrial policy is 'Grow, baby, grow'.' In the interest of national pride, I omitted to add, 'as for a transitions agenda, regions, or labour-force skills, the current policy appears to be replacing regional government with a squadron of space police'. Universities as infrastructure In another session, urban geographer Kristian Ruming laid out a framework for assessing the crucial part played by universities in urban and national economy and society. He described universities as crucial resources of urban and national infrastructure – physical and cultural hubs that shape, provide, and deliver diverse social, cultural, economic, informational, educational, and knowledge foundations for cities and nations. As with other infrastructure, universities facilitate flows of, and access to, utilities, goods, people, and ideas. They are essential to sustaining contemporary social life, and they create opportunities to imagine, produce and enjoy better futures. Ruming also argued that universities were rarely understood in these terms. Instead, universities were being reinterpreted as solvers of state problems, as unnecessarily expensive government-funded industry training establishments, or centres for the cultivation of privileged discontent that must be squashed. Universities deliver so much more. Governments are right to demand public accountability from universities, but this demand should begin by recognising the full breadth of universities' infrastructural value. What I learned in Newcastle will enhance my teaching, research and institutional service. I'm confident it will yield more than the cost of a few hours' advice from a Big Four consultant on what to do with our universities or our country. The point is not that we must be like Australia, but that there is value in thinking like Australia, at least for a moment. We cannot be big, brash, and part of crucial global circuits of finance, resources, and geopolitical concern. But we can support our universities to debate and confront who we are and who we are not, how we should build our economy, and how we might imagine ourselves into creative and self-assured economic, cultural and political subjects. Our policy suite is more constrained than Australia's, but it ought to build on remembering who we have been and what we have done and celebrating what we have become, to imagine and invest in unfolding futures. This need not mean rejecting growth or embracing without question global tech entrepreneurs, but it should mean some thinking and must mean something more than 'growth' for its own sake, exporting resources, or scrambling for spittle from the slavering jaws of the tech bros. Matariki is the season for this kind of thinking. A time to task our universities with leading us on a journey of 'Future Made in Aotearoa'.
