Statement from Mid Dome Wilding Trees Charitable Trust:

Environmentalists are dismayed by recent indications that South Island farmers intend to plant the high country with pine forests to take advantage of the Emissions Trading Scheme.

This reaction follows news that Brian Usherwood, LINZ's general manager of business support, reported to a Parliamentary select committee that district plans must prepare for the increasing interest some lessees have shown in growing forests (Otago Daily Times 15 October).

Mr Usherwood is only half-correct in asserting that 'District plans may stipulate where forests could be planted or what type of trees could be grown.' The growing plague of tree weeds spreading uncontrolled from plantations shows that pine forests have little respect for human borders.

Dense stands of exotic conifers choke native vegetation, dramatically reduce the water yield from upland landscapes (with consequences for agriculture and hydro power generation), and, once established, become very difficult and expensive to eradicate. Nevertheless, in some quarters they are being touted as climate-friendly by providing carbon-sequestering tree cover where native tussock grassland otherwise prevails. This is notwithstanding the high carbon sequestration values of the tussock grasslands and associated wetlands which can be replaced by pines.

Capable of withstanding extremes of heat, wind, drought and cold, pine trees in many upland areas are displacing native tussock land and seriously degrading iconic landscape and recreational values of the high country. With the advent of the ETS, much more scrutiny is required of how to protect indigenous biodiversity from the spreading tree monoculture, downwind of the plantations.

Mr Usherwood's observation, 'You wouldn't want the entire MacKenzie Country covered in pine' is ironic, given the high likelihood of large areas of the Mackenzie Country being choked by exotic pines (or converted to dairying) in coming decades. There are similar wilding tree issues elsewhere across the South Island, including Mid Dome in northern Southland, the Queenstown basin, the Craigieburn are in mid Canterbury and the Hamner-Molesworth region of north Canterbury-southern Marlborough.

An apparent oversight in the Climate Change Response Act 2008 could result in the absurdity of significant carbon charges on wilding pine control. The bill to remove the 250 hectares of planted lodgepole pine on Mid Domewhere a special Wilding Tree Control Trust, now three years into a 12-year control plan, is in top gearis said to be $3 million.

Section 184(9)(b) of the Act determines that if a pre-1990 tree weed forest is not naturally regenerated (ie is planted or sown), then it does not qualify for an exemption from the carbon charge. Because the Mid Dome lodgepole pines (Pinus contorta) were deliberately planted, the task of stemming this major environmental threat, before it spirals out of control, looks set to be frustrated by a surcharge equivalent to 60% of its present, already straitened budget.

Mid Dome lies near the southern end of Lake Wakatipu. The prevailing nor-wester winds make it the perfect takeoff point for the trees winged seeds that have already produced millions of younger plants which now cover some 80,000 hectares up to 40km downwind, in remote high country. Without containment, the spread from Mid Dome alone is predicted to take over more than 200,000 hectares of upland within the next 40 years, removing the options for any other land use.