TFAG information

26 February 2025

The Tairāwhiti Forestry Action Group (TFAG) met for the fifth time last week and members had one of their most important conversations yet. 

TFAG was created in August 2024 by Forestry Minister Todd McClay to accelerate the woody debris clean-up in Tairāwhiti after Gabrielle — and look at ways to mitigate future risk. Members include representatives of Gisborne District Council (GDC), forestry contractors, farmers, iwi and Eastland Wood Council, represented by chair Julian Kohn. 

Kohn said some of the conversation last week was whether TFAG should contribute financially to the harvesting cost of forestry companies, who have pine trees on land that’s been classed as 3B Overlay by GDC (steep erosion-prone land that has a connection to a waterway). 

The intention is these areas have a land use change away from forestry to permanent native tree cover, or a mixture of exotics and natives.  

But until then, some of this steep hill country land is already covered in pine trees that should be harvested. There are increased costs of getting the wood out of these areas as it takes crews longer to extract the trees and they must be more careful. 

“TFAG helping to get these trees down is something to seriously consider.” 

Kohn said the idea was posed to see if there was an appetite for TFAG to work with forest companies who have upcoming harvests on areas marked as 3B Overlay (provided there were no existing enforcement orders in place). 

“The issue is that harvesting these 3B areas, would create a bit more slash and sediment for a period of time. 

“And if the forestry company thinks they will get penalised for it by Council under resource consent conditions, then the forest company could decide to walk away and not harvest the pine trees. 

“Those pine trees would then be there until we got another Bola or Gabrielle. One day some of those trees would fall, and they would clog the waterways. 

“This is a situation nobody wants. 

“If we want to see land use change and improve vegetation on the whenua then it makes sense to get rid of those trees where we don’t want them now, while we’ve got the roads in there and the contractors.” 

Kohn said aerial mapping of the region had been completed with the imagery of “exceptional quality”. 

“Ultimately these images will be available to the public, however right now GDC is processing the raw data so it can be analysed.” 

From there TFAG would be able to zoom in on the images and have the detail to identify where the woody debris, trees and logs in the waterways are, as well as other areas seen as risky, and then the work would be prioritised, along with discussions with landowners. 

Logic Forest Solutions has been appointed as the Operation Manager to carry out the woody debris removal work led by Bill Wheeler and Ben Williams. 

Kohn said part of the kaupapa from Minister McClay for TFAG was they get inside the forest gate, work with the managers of the forestry companies when the time comes and get upstream to have a look. 

“There’s no point cleaning up the bottom of the stream if the top has more wood and sediment to come down in the next extreme weather event.”