Editorial: New Treeland?
OPINION: Forestry is not all bad and planting pine trees on land that is prone to erosion or in soils which cannot support livestock farming makes sense.
The excellent work done by groups such as 50 Shades of Green is opening the public’s eyes to this Government’s stupid policy settings, which are seeing far too much good farming land being lost to overseas-owned corporations planting trees.
Now the paid mouthpieces for the tree sector are trying to justify this loss of good farmland and decimation of rural communities by claiming that any restrictions on conversions of farms to forestry will “dangerously jeopardise the fight against climate change and New Zealand’s hope of achieving its greenhouse gas emission targets”.
Let’s hope this desperate spin campaign by the foreign-owned tree speculators does not lessen the drive by the farm sector.
