Native forests: Seeing the trees for more than the wood

They're planting forests that will provide wood and income forever — just not in their lifetime. Meet the people behind Tane's Tree Trust.

When he tramps up the steeper sections of his Cambridge farm, Ian Brennan surveys his land with eyes that can see the future.

One year ago, the slope he stood on was unproductive grassland – now dotted with manuka and totara seedlings.

"This was no good as it was; it was too steep, so it's not productive," he told Seven Sharp.

"It might as well be attractive, and if it can be attractive and productive, which is what it will be eventually, that's everything."

Some of his first trees sit across the valley. Fifteen years ago, he began chipping away at clay to plant natives. Half of them died, so one year later, he was back to fill the gaps.

“I just started planting and planting every year, and now it looks like this.”

It looks breathtaking. Every native species Brennan could find has been planted there.

On his 85-hectare property, only 27 now remain in grass. They’re the best paddocks – flat and fertile on the top of each ridge. But on the slopes below, natives are flourishing.

They’re holding his soil in place, cleaning the streams that feed the Piako and Waikato rivers and creating a home for the flocks of kererū that now call his farm home.

These will be the future forests he’s planted to chop down.

At Restore Native, Adam Thompson and the team are focused on growing low-cost seedlings to reforest the Waikato.

"We're talking about establishing things for around that seven, eight, $9000 a hectare, which is sort of double the cost of pine trees."

But most make the mistake of focusing on the harvest.

"The amount of people who will call me and say, 'Adam, I want 500 rimu because we are going to plant a rimu forest'.

"That’s not quite how it works," said Thompson.

Instead, he teaches them that a monoculture is never natural. Our natives thrive together in a complex network of assistance, explained Thompson.

"So we lean heavily on things like manuka and kanuka. They create a canopy, and other things like rimu and kahikatea come up through it."

Spacing, species selection, and location are all important factors when choosing how to plant a property. But the most significant barrier is time.

"You know, getting in the ground is almost the easy bit. The hard work starts looking after them."

David Bergen has spent 45 years researching native forestry.

Our forests are "delicious" to pests, meaning control is a relentless part of native management.

Young trees need to be cleared of weeds, and juveniles need yearly pruning and trimming to create straight trunks.

But even after half a decade, he says there’s still a lot of work to do to understand native forestry.

“We're all in the learning phase here. You know, we are talking about really complex situations. It's not just like planting one species,” said Bergen.

We know very little about growing native forestry. The money has always been spent on increasing our ever-growing radiata forests.

"The pendulum swung in terms of funding and interest just came back a bit from our policymakers and to spend more effort over the years on research with our natives. Just think how much further we would be down the track."

"We started Tane's Tree Trust 25 years ago in response to what we felt was a need, a gap in our applied research, particularly for native species," said Bergen.

The non-profit charitable trust’s goal is to encourage the use of indigenous tree species for timber and their environment-enhancing properties.

"We thought if we could provide information and help in some of those areas, people might follow suit," said Tane’s Tree Trust Chairman Peter Berg.

They’re not anti-pine – in fact, most of them have worked in traditional forestry for decades – they’re just advocating for a change in perception.

"The wood is legendary — totara, which is probably one of the most durable timbers anywhere in the world," said Bergen.

"Kauri, which is very stable, easy to work, and light — there's probably something here for almost every end-use."

The significant difference from traditional pine plantations is the forest never falls.

In Northland, Tane’s Tree Trust has been selectively harvesting totara. Individual trees are identified and felled without damaging the surrounding trees.

"We've been successfully and profitably using things like farm tractors with winches," said Berg.

It’s about carefully measuring an established forest's growth and then harvesting a smaller percentage.

"We might take a tree from there and a tree from there. But overall, we're always going to have that canopy."

It’s a far slower process than the clearing of the land that takes place during a pine harvest. Instead, the bush remains, and the timber you extract can reap huge rewards.

"Totara, we've been selling for $3500 to $4000 per cubic metre, almost four times what you can sell rough-sawn green radiator pine lumber.”

"For a forest to remain healthy, every tree must die and be replaced eventually. So the sort of forestry we're doing with continuous cover forestry is it's just managing the deaths," said Brennan.

The beauty of continuous cover forestry is that it can last forever. Birds and other trees will naturally reseed new plants in the places where they were harvested.

It’s an endless supply – you just have to wait to reap the rewards.

As Brennan reached around some of his oldest kauri trunks, the time frames these men work in became apparent.

"You could have a 600-millimetre log in 40 years. That’s slower than radiata, but not that much."

None of them will be alive to see those trees turned into timber.

“They might be ready to harvest in 40 years. But I won't be here then,” said Brennan, not in sadness but pure acceptance.

He has no kids waiting in the wings to reap the rewards of his work.

Maybe a "tree pervert" (his words) will buy his farm one day and reap the financial rewards. But he knows nature will benefit until then.

Instead, he’s happy to say he left the land better than he found it.

"We've become so short-term in our thinking that we need to rediscover the idea of doing things that we can't possibly finish in our lifetime — because many worthwhile things take more than one generation.

"You're building something that's never going to stop."