Forestry company fined $112,500 for evironmental breaches near Waihi
Convictions and fines totalling $112,500 have been imposed on a logging company for repeated environmental damage on a farm near Wahi between August 2022 and October 2023.
Forestry owners oppose the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment’s proposal to limit forestry offsets to agriculture.
They say they need clarity and it is time for the Government to make decisions.
The president of the Farm Forestry Association, Neil Cullen, says if the Government decides to limit offsets to agriculture, this would have a dramatic negative impact on the value of carbon units, reduce planting rates and perpetuate “the seesaw policy that forestry has been experiencing for too long”.
The Forest Owners Association president, Peter Weir, says Upton’s report is contradicting the Productivity Commission’s paper earlier this year which pointed to planting trees serving as carbon sinks as the main means of getting New Zealand to carbon neutrality by 2050.
“The PCE takes a different tack from the Productivity Commission. The PCE makes the argument that long-lived gases from the burning of fossil fuels should be treated differently from short lived greenhouse gases from biological sources,” he says.
Weir concedes that Simon Upton is correct in that forestry can’t offer climate change solutions indefinitely.
“The industry has never suggested that we are a solution for all time. But in the immediate term we just can’t wait for the development of a political will for a reduction in the use of fossil fuels, or the evolution of technical solutions to reduce livestock emissions.
“We don’t have time for either of those.
“Fast growing exotic plantation trees are a quick fix for getting our net emissions down in the critical next couple of decades.”
Cullen points to the Interim Climate Change Panel coming up with yet another set of formulas for addressing greenhouse gas emissions.
“It’s time for government decisions.”
Alliance has announced a series of capital raise roadshow event, starting on 29 September in Tuatapere, Southland.
State farmer Pāmu (Landcorp) has announced a new equity partnership in an effort to support pathways to farm ownership for livestock farm operators.
Following a recent overweight incursion that saw a Mid-Canterbury contractor cop a $12,150 fine, the rural contracting industry is calling time on what they consider to be outdated and unworkable regulations regarding weight and dimensions that they say are impeding their businesses.
Trade Minister Todd McClay says his officials plan to meet their US counterparts every month from now on to better understand how the 15% tariff issue there will play out, and try and get some certainty there for our exporters about the future.
Brett Wotton, an Eastern Bay of Plenty kiwifruit grower and harvest contractor, has won the 2025 Kiwifruit Innovation Award for his work to support lifting fruit quality across the industry.
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