{"id":259346,"date":"2026-01-30T13:04:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-30T13:04:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/259346\/"},"modified":"2026-01-30T13:04:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-30T13:04:08","slug":"gisborne-environmental-group-urges-council-to-stop-appeasing-forestry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/259346\/","title":{"rendered":"Gisborne environmental group urges council to stop \u2018appeasing\u2019 forestry"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mana Taiao Tair\u0101whiti (MTT) organised a petition three years ago, following the devastation of ex-Tropical Cyclone Hale, which has been signed by over 12,000 people and sparked the Ministerial Inquiry into Land Use report<\/a>. Cyclone Gabrielle hit the region just weeks later.<\/p>\n

On Thursday, close to the third anniversary of the cyclones and the presentation of the petition to the council, MTT held a h\u012bkoi of around 35 people and presented the council with a \u201cPetition progress score card\u201d, a briefing paper, and four requests for more action.<\/p>\n

Protesters speaking with Local Democracy Reporting said they wanted more action on land-use changes. <\/p>\n

\" The h\u012bkoi marked three years since ex-tropical Cyclone Hale, and was organised by Mana Taiao Tair\u0101whiti. Photo \/ Zita Campbell<\/p>\n

Member of MTT Tui Warmenhoven said marching again felt \u201clike deja vu\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re lobbying the council directly to say we want action faster.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mere Tamanui said she had been displaced after Cyclone Gabrielle and was there for her \u201cwhakapapa and wh\u0101nau connections to the whenua\u201d.<\/p>\n

She spent two years, \u201cmucking through the silt\u201d, but ended up moving to another farm in a different Tair\u0101whiti town for work.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe detachment from our home has been pretty significant on our wellbeing emotionally … It\u2019s taken its toll.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tracking the progress since the petition, at the council meeting, Caddie noted, to the council\u2019s \u201ccredit\u201d it had invested in the Transition Advisory Group (TAG), a cross-sector group to create guidelines to assist in transitioning highly erodable land, and the group had \u201cbuilt consensus\u201d on the Transition Business case.<\/p>\n

\"ManaMana Taiao Tairawhiti spokesman Manu Caddie.<\/p>\n

It brought together \u201creally diverse, disparate interests\u201d from forestry and farming, members of the community, environmental perspectives, and the council and MPI, Caddie said.<\/p>\n

However, \u201cwithin the last week you\u2019ve been told there\u2019s no support from central government,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

MTT asked the council to up its \u201cadvocacy game\u201d in requesting support for the transition programme business case to all MPs and ministers.<\/p>\n

During the h\u012bkoi, attendee Renee Raroa told Local Democracy Reporting that the community had done a lot of groundwork for planning solutions.<\/p>\n

She still wanted to see the resourcing achieved to put the thinking into action, despite the central Government \u201cnot coming to the party with funding\u201d.<\/p>\n

Caddie said at the meeting there was \u201csome better practice now\u201d as a result of council action since the petition.<\/p>\n

Part of these actions, Caddie said, was enforcement orders, which had \u201cprobably been the most effective\u201d measure to change forestry practice in the last 10 years. However, \u201cunfortunately, this is also an expensive process\u201d.<\/p>\n

As part of the group\u2019s requests, MTT wanted the council to require all existing forestry consent holders to commission independent risk assessments on their blocks. <\/p>\n

Additionally, they wanted the council to stop allowing consents for planting and clear-fell harvesting in red and orange zoned land.<\/p>\n

Kohn said in recent years, the industry had been doing risk assessments, along the lines of what had been indicated in enforcement areas, and in line with what the draft regulation changes to the National Environmental Standards indicate might be required in the future.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a result of the enforcement orders, and as a pragmatic change by forestry companies, we are already doing risk assessments as part of our consenting process.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have not been doing independents; we do it with our own staff, but we do have advisers and consultants come along and provide us with advice when appropriate. <\/p>\n

The vast majority of land in the district was red zone, Kohn said.<\/p>\n

\"EastlandEastland Wood Council chairman Julian Kohn. Photo \/ Supplied<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you don\u2019t plant something in this land, then it will end up in the streams and the creeks and the rivers and our moana, which we\u2019re all trying to avoid.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said the debate about what to plant on the land, whether it should be radiata, another exotic species or natives, was a whole other conversation.<\/p>\n

However, there was mutual agreement that in the Overlay 3B (LO3B), and Indicative Transition Zone (ITZ), which was land identified as a high priority for transition, vegetation cover needed to transition out of radiata into \u201csome other form\u201d, Kohn said.<\/p>\n

He said they were not disagreeing \u201cin principle\u201d with the TAG conversations about converting 100,000ha of erosion-prone land in Tair\u0101whiti to permanent native vegetation cover.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re completely on board with that, and we have been doing that for a few years now, because as part of our consent conditions we are required to plant something else in those gullies … but we do have concerns around how it is enacted.\u201d<\/p>\n

The h\u012bkoi started at Young Nick\u2019s Statue at Waikanae Beach at 9am and presented to the council at 10am, and then moved on to National Party MP for East Coast Dana Kirkpatrick\u2019s offices.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mana Taiao Tair\u0101whiti (MTT) organised a petition three years ago, following the devastation of ex-Tropical Cyclone Hale, which…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":259347,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[432,149182,5205,7557,44973,63059,3238,12506,209,2454,8563,130,111,43,139,69,25266,1324,8229,61,3552,4524],"class_list":["post-259346","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-action","tag-appeasing","tag-council","tag-district","tag-environmental","tag-faster","tag-forestry","tag-gisborne","tag-group","tag-industry","tag-lobbying","tag-more","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-protesters","tag-stop","tag-they","tag-to","tag-urges","tag-want"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=259346"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259346\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/259347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=259346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=259346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}