13 January 2000

Mr Kevin Smith
Conservation Director
Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society of NZ (Inc.)
PO Box 631
Wellington

Dear Mr Smith,

Thanks for your letter of January 6th. I welcome contact with your society, and I share your preference for rational debate instead of media beat-ups. Would either the 1st or the 8th of June, at noon, be convenient for you to give a presentation to the School? The format would be a half hour for you to state your views, and then 20-25 mins of discussion.

On the issue of extremism, I stand behind our press release, but let me explain why I believe your position on the beech scheme is an extreme one. I have always opposed harvesting of our native forests in the past, even to the point of traveling to Okarito with members of NFAC in 1974 to speak against what was a technically ill-founded scheme to "selectively" log rimu. This beech scheme is different. As I'm sure you are aware, bird populations have plummeted as many of our native forest ecosystems have been brought under stress from introduced fauna. Beech forest ecology and regeneration are far better understood than are the ecology and regeneration of rimu, and a very small scale of harvest that also provides greatly increased expenditure on pest control seems a wise option to pursue.

We have three options:

1) leave our native forests to deteriorate, with currently unsustainable management by DoC because the department is underfunded; 2) greatly increase expenditure on pest control paid for via taxes; or 3) combine a more modest increase in DoC funding with some control funded by harvesting in some carefully selected areas of our estate.

The first option is a non-starter, as I'm sure you'd agree.

The second option is an extreme one in my opinion. It would involve a very large tax investment in our native forests every year, with a clearly wonderful aesthetic return. It is unlikely that the public will support such an on-going investment when we are now a poor country with massive social problems. Why choose this option when there is an alternative that is equally ecologically sustainable and more financially and socially sustainable?

The third option is the best one, so long as it is truly ecologically sustainable. In my view, the proposals would lead to sustainable practice, and although there has been some constructive criticism of the original management proposals, TWC appears to have responded positively to these criticisms and has established a good working relationship with DoC, so that DoC insiders now tell us they believe the scheme is sustainable.

In the tropics, we desperately need options that do not require people to ignore the wealth that exists in their forests while their people starve. The TWC beech scheme was a blueprint for just such an option. As it is, we are reduced to calling on tropical countries to simply stop logging while at the same time New Zealanders avidly buy products made from tropical hardwoods. A small, sustainable harvest of beech would have reduced our reliance on tropical hardwoods while providing a more acceptable example of sustainable management for third world countries.

To ignore social and financial aspects of the question is to take an extreme, unrealistic position. Moreover, your position has far wider implications that just 0.1 million hectares of our 2.8 million hectare estate. It calls into question what we mean when we say we wish to live sustainably. I would have thought that "living sustainably" was the meta goal that linked all conservation groups together. We cannot live sustainably if we examine only the ecological aspects of a proposal and ignore the social and financial ones.

My main contribution to the debate has been to draw attention to the fact that Dr Efford's model, while mathematically and technically good, has been placed in software that encourages users to adopt unrealistic assumptions, and so leads them to draw incorrect conclusions about the effects of the proposed harvest on beech forest structure. You can read more about this on:

http://www.fore.canterbury.ac.nz/euan/beech/beech.htm

I'd be happy to talk to your Society in return for your talk to the School of Forestry. Please let me know if and when this would be convenient for you.

Yours Sincerely,

Euan Mason
Senior Lecturer

cc: Prof. Sands
SoF's beech website