 Well kiora koutou everyone, welcome to this webisode, we'll be discussing about the vital importance of native forests to New Zealand and to the world. I'm Vincent Herringer and I'm the host of the Our Regenerative Future Season 2 o Tatao Naheri o Our Forest and it's produced by Pure Advantage and Tarnes Tree Trust. And also these webisodes we're very grateful for the collaboration of the Edmund Hillary Fellowship. Over the past year Pure Advantage and Tarnes Tree Trust have taken a deep dive into the regeneration of native forests as a source of natural, spiritual and economic value. We've had so much momentum and dialogue around the series which we're really grateful for and excited about. And these conversations we hope to spark some cross-sector dialogue and get people thinking about the potential for native forests in a regenerative and restorative economy. In today's webinar we'll be looking at the current state of New Zealand's native forests, the major issues that threaten them and the potential opportunities for change and growth. And I'll be joined in this by a superb panel of three experts, Professor Warwick Sylvester of Waikato University and also of Tarnes Tree Trust, Ramona Radford from Scion and Sheridan Ashford, the co-founder of Future Foresters. In a second I'll let these fine folk introduce themselves but just some housekeeping. We are very happy to take your questions, simply add them to the chat and I'll do my best to put them to the panellists if there's time and there should be time. We've allowed time for it. We'll be finishing at 7.30 but that doesn't mean you have to. There's a ton of great material for you to read on our website that's pureadvantage.org, pureadvantage.org. And you can follow us on any of your favourite social media channels except perhaps TikTok. We are on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter and of course we'll be back again next Tuesday for the second in the seven part series. Right, well to our guests, I'd really like for you to be introduced to our guests. They're going to tell them a bit about themselves so they're going to tell us who they are, what they do and why forests matter to them. And Ramona, maybe we could start with you. Kia ora, thank you for joining us. Who are you? What do you do? Kia ora Vince. Nice to see everyone, sorry I've got a poll on my screen. I'm just going to take that off there. So, I'm Ramona Radford. My people are from the eastern Bay of Plenty. I work at Scion and have been the lead of Te Ao Māori capability and Māori partnerships here. Scion is a Crown Research Institute that has a mandate for research science and innovation for forests, including Standing Forest or Nahide. My greatest achievement is that I am a nanny. So, why forests matter so much to me and the world that I belong to. Is that something that you want me to talk about now, Vince? Well, we're going to come back to your role as a nanny. That sounds very interesting, but I suspect what you wanted to say is that they matter to you and to your mokopuna. Absolutely, 100% to me and my mokopuna, to me and my people, to me and the world that I belong to. They're so important for so many reasons. So, I'll come back to the reasons why later. Yeah, great. Thank you, Kia ora. Thank you, Ramona. Warwick, over to you. What do you do in regards to forests and why do they matter to you? Firstly, just to reiterate, I've been retired from the university for 12 years. So, that's a bit behind me, but I still seem to carry that deficit. Otani Shreetrust has been a mission for me because Rob McGowan and I had coffee one day. So, if you may know, Pa McGowan, Rob and we sat down and said, this was in about the year 2000. And we've been observing the way in which native forests suddenly had been exploited, but suddenly were totally closed down. The conservation movement had effectively reduced any activity within the forest and closed down. So, we thought there's got to be another view. We've got to look at forests in all of their values. We've got to look at all of the values that forests provide. And so, a group of us got together. We had a seminar and we formed Tani Shreetrust. We'll talk a little bit more about Tani Shreetrust later on. But I've worked scientifically in forests for a long time. I've worked a lot on nutrient cycling. I've worked with Kauri quite a lot. And I have a feeling in forests that I find is spiritual. When I'm in a forest, I feel an affection for the environment that it creates in me and with the forest itself. So, there's more to it than just the science for me. I am the chairman of a trust which manages 100 acres of bush outside of Hamilton, where we've taken a fairly trashed piece of bush and we've turned it into a wonderful piece of lowland forest. And that really turns me on. Kia ora Warwick. Thank you for sharing that. You know what they say about professors, it's like the Hotel California. You can check out, but you can never leave. Sheridan, tell us about your work and tell us a little bit about future foresters. And we will come back in greater detail. But tell us now, who are you and why do forests matter to you? Cool. Thanks, Vincent. I work in commercial plantation exotic forestry. It's my day job. I'm a trained forester. But I guess kind of why I'm here is I'm part of a group that started the Future Foresters New Zealand. And we're really passionate about the next generation of foresters and spreading the word, getting more people involved in forestry because I feel like it's this thing in New Zealand that nobody really knows exists. And we just want more people to know what it is. We want people to know the benefits. We sort of want to help tell that story to the generations that are coming through at the moment and also what will that look like in the future is sort of what turns me on. And not just for native forests, but exotics as well? All forestry. Yeah, I think it's just this part of our landscape that I'm not much New Zealanders know anything about. Awesome. Thank you. Well, thanks everyone for the brief introductions. Warwick, I might start with you. I want to know more about the state of our native forests because we have the sense that there is a conservation estate. But is that conservation estate in peril? Is it big enough? And what kind of health is it in? Can you give us a kind of a 101 on the state of our native forests? Well, in addressing that, there are two aspects to this. One is the quantity. The other is the quality. Let's address the quantity first of all. New Zealand prior to the arrival of humans was about 80% forest. It's very good records of that. When Europeans arrived here, there was about 50% cover of the country as in forest. Today we've got 30%. So we have lost an enormous amount of forest. So in terms of quantity, we've lost a lot. And most of that, of course, is in the high country. And it, of course, most of it's in the conservation estate. But I start to look at countries which have less forest in them than we do. They're remarkably few. Well, those that do, you find they're either deserts. Australia's only got 70% of its country in forest. And you can mention why that is. You can't grow forests in the desert. Sudan, for example, is 18. But the UK, of course, which has been almost essentially the forest, but when you compare New Zealand with other areas to take Japan, which is a country of similar size, well, 120 million people, to support 120 million people on a country which is a bit bigger than New Zealand. I haven't guess how much they've gone for. 67% of that country is under forest. They seem to be able to. People say you can't afford to feed yourself unless you have a land under grass. That's not true. So the history of New Zealand is we've essentially deforested all of the low country and turned it into grass. So that's the quantity business. The quality is another one. Because the quality, of course, has also gone downhill because we have introduced into our forests a number of exotic animals, predators of various sorts, weeds. We've allowed grazing into our forests. Many farms have winter grazing inside a bunch of forest. And the piece of forest that I manage is exactly like that. We've got a bit of the animals. We've actually transformed. We've transformed that forest. We have planted 9,000 trees amongst it. And we've got another 1,000 to go in next month. I digress. So we have decimated the amount of forest. We've actually ruined a lot of the habitat. I'd like to go into that at a great length. But there's an essential summary. And that forest that does exist, the main threats would be from what? From further deforestation or is it from pests? Mainly from pests. I was just a few days ago in a doubtful sound. And we were looking at the map and we could see a secretary island, an island that's had all of the predators taken off it. It's a wonderful example of what forest can be like. There are increasing examples. And then two days, three days later, I had a night walk in Zelandia. And you know the fence area in Wellington. A night walk, absolutely fantastic. Two hours in this forest in the middle of the night. Within four minutes we saw two kiwis. And then a few minutes later, we saw two tuatara. And so on went on. We go into places like that, Zelandia and other places where predators have been removed. You see what the transformation has been brought about. It's very, very obvious. Ramona, when you think about how much of our nahiri has been lost, what has been lost in the process? What makes our forests so special, so unique in the world? And when you think about the loss, what does that actually mean? Well, to Te Ao Māori, the natural world was birthed through a process. Kō te kore, the potential in the void. So there was this potential in a space of nothingness. Ngā te kore te po, the form in the darkness began to take shape. Kite whai ao, to the glimmer of dawn. Kite au marama, to the bright light of day. Te hai Māori ora, there is life. During this time, the earth and the sky were formed and came into being. Koranginui ka moi i a papatuanuku ka puta ki waho. Kō tane, nuia rangi. So ranginui an papatuanuku, sky and earth gave birth to the forest. And many other things at that point. So this is a narrative, obviously, from Te Ao Māori. And inside this birthing process, there were many phases and stages. So this narrative acknowledges that the natural world evolved over time. And as a reminder, it keeps us as tangata whenua, humble. And it reminds us to walk gently upon the earth. And it also rehumanises us to our environment. So what does the nahere mean to Te Ao Māori? As a word, nahere is two ideas combined. Combined, they mean the binding of the many. So the binding of the many trees, you could say. The binding of the many ecosystems. The binding of the different worlds, but the human and the natural world. The binding of earth and sky. But the nahere to Te Ao Māori is a self-supporting system of life. So it's a single system that is connected to sky and to earth. And those aren't three things to the indigenous people of the globe. Those are the same thing. And we as humans are a part of that whole. So when I think of what the nahere means to me, I think I imagine the great mana or experiencing the great mana of the primordial rainforest that once existed here. And covered the land in the effect of that single living organism, the forest, on the land and the waterways, the cycles of energy and evaporation and the transpiration. Sorry, I'm reading some of this. The ebden flowed with the seasons, with the sun and the moon and moved in the space between sky and earth across generations. And this was the experience of the first peoples to this land. This was the experience that they had. And that great forest, as Waruk has said, is no more. There are only remnants of what once was. So Pudako narratives and Waiata told by descendants of the first people are the only living memories that remain of those first primordial forests. So to te ao Māori, the nahere is everything. It's our teacher. It's our teaching curriculum. It's our food basket. It's our medicine cupboard. It's, you know, as we know, it's become understood as the lungs of the earth. So the nahere to te ao Māori is everything. It's interesting, Waruk, that so many of the ideas captured in what Ramona has just talked about and also this idea of Māori, the connection of things together in one, I suppose, interconnected network is coming back as a science idea and as an economic idea, isn't it? And you had this beautiful phrase, think like a forest. Can you expand on that a little bit in it? It seems to me that think like a forest captures also some of those sentiments that are expressed in those legends. I'd like to just follow on from an owner and use the word tāi ao because that's the word that captures all of this, the Māori word tāi ao. I hope my pronunciation's OK Ramona. Tāi ao. Not tāi ao, which means slow down. Tāi ao is the word which captures exactly what you're saying, the events, because what that says is that the forest is a combination of a whole lot of things. And in fact, in European terms, it was the term oikos, it's a Greek word which has become ecology and which says that the natural systems are a combination of the soil, the water, the climate and the organisms in it. And it ties that all together and there's been a word that's been used in Māori culture for a long time. And it's essentially the same as the word ecology that we use today. It's fascinating that they've got them both and I want to refer to something that Kiri Allen has spoken about in a few minutes because I think it's essential for us to consider that. Sheridan, when you think about native forests, Ngāhi, as a young person, I think you've mentioned this to me before. Being part of the conservation estate has meant that it's kind of over there. It's something else that is kind of sequestered away. Sequestered is probably the wrong word in this climate change times, but it is something that's kind of behind a fence, isn't it? And what the challenges from what Tane's tree trust is saying is actually let's bring it forward, let's bring it into industry. Can you explain from a young person's point of view how did you perceive native forests? I guess at university, I've graduated relatively recently. Apart from, I think, a few papers in the first year, native forestry probably wasn't part of our learning because as far as a professional forester is concerned, that native forestry is locked up. So it's not for foresting to us. So getting involved with Pure Advantage and learning more about Tane's tree trust and even just listening to Ramona talk, it gives me so many more feelings about the forest and it's so much more than I think that we learn about in our professional degrees at university. Yeah. And you mentioned, when we were first talking, the idea of actually harvesting native trees seemed like a foreign concept to you. Yeah, I mean, we learn about selective harvesting. We've been to this great beach forest in North Canterbury. There's one place that does it and that's all I've really ever heard about being able to do that continuous cover selective foresting. Yeah. Let's just go to Europe and see where it's been done for the last 500 years and we've learnt a lot from them. Continuous cover forestry is a well-researched, well-known method of dealing with forest. Unfortunately in New Zealand, we had this wonderful resource which was there waiting for us to cut down and we got stuck into it, didn't we? There's some awful stories. I was reading one today about the 50,000 acres of forest that was burnt down in Northland. In one fire, we got rid of it big time because we had to put grass in. Ramona. In the Forest Act, it talks about, I think in the Forest Act, you know, that's what the Indigenous forestry defines, I guess, Indigenous forestry or in as far as New Zealand is concerned. And in that act, that was written at a time, 1949, during which New Zealand realised and suddenly recognised that there was no forest or there was very little forest left and that there needed to be a rethink about how we treated these Nahere or the remnants of what was once the great forest of Tani or Te Waonea Tani. And I think about the use of the word forestry when we refer to the Nahere. And as an Indigenous person, that kind of gives me, you know, it kind of makes me feel a little uncomfortable when we refer to it as forestry. My preference is that, you know, we talk about things like tree farms if we're going to be planting plantations or new plantations. We talk about things like tree farms rather than forestry. So tree farms for purposes that may extend beyond the current notion of what forestry is because we've built an industry here that is built on the colonial model of a forest and that colonial model is resource-focused. It's about taking resources and creating wealth from those resources. So when I think about the future of what our Nahere could offer in the way of an economic return, I like to think of it rather than being profit-driven because I don't think our Nahere should be profit-driven. I think it should be, definitely profit needs to be part of an equation. But if it is profit-driven, then I think it loses its special essence. It loses its ability to do all of those intangible things that we all talked about in the opening minutes of this webinar. And I think as a nation, we really need to think about our cultural identity when it comes to our forests. And that cultural identity, I think, needs to be... Yes, we've done some very interesting things with radiata pine and other species. I think that that cultural identity should envelop that. But there should be a very special part of that cultural identity set apart for Nahere. And we should treat it specially, you know, as a result. You use the word wealth, and wealth in its biggest sense would still capture that. But I guess what, if I can interpret what I thought you were saying, or think you were saying, you were talking about a very narrow definition of wealth around financial returns and the singular focus on just cutting down as much as you can to get a higher financial return. And what you talked about at the beginning was an understanding of wealth in a much bigger sense, in a full ecological and a spiritual sense also. Yeah, a holistic approach to wealth. Yes. The context that I led into this part of the discussion was around colonisation. And the idea of colonisation was to go near the most parts of the world and then send those whatever resources you were to find there back to the motherland to support the motherland. And I think we need to move away from that as a nation. We need to kind of redefine ourselves. You know, at some point somebody thought of this as the antipodes, this in Australia as the antipodes, the near the most parts from the motherland. I think, you know, we're 200 years later and we're still operating as a nation on that model. And when we're thinking about Ngahere, Tree Farms, Indigenous Forestry, I'd like us to think about what that means. What does that mean for you, Warwick? You talk about the full benefits of native forestry. So tell us, you know, expand. What are the full benefits of native forestry? There are a whole lot of points there, Ramona. I'd like to take up on. The first one is that Maori right from the very beginning did continuous cover forestry in Ngahere. They would take a tree out, make a canoe out of it. They would take several things out and build buildings. They treated it as continuous cover forestry, and you've got to believe that. That's what happened. And this is exactly what we advocate for. There are so many values. One of our members has just written a paper. It's just been published right now. It's 100 pages long, which talks about the non timber values of native forest. There have been attempts to value those in dollar terms. I have attempted to stop people doing that because the moment you do that, someone's going to find a problem with it. But you can value it in subjective terms and say, how much do you value this forest for whatever value you'd like to see in it? And that may be landscape. It may be heritage values. Maybe you're putting this forest in for your grandchildren. It may be for water quality. It may be for soil quality. All sorts of things. There are hundreds of things. And we advocate, right from the very beginning, we said, we have in New Zealand some of the best software timbers of the world. We value them for those properties. We should use them for whatever properties they are valued for because we take the wrong way out of the forest. We take food from the forest. Why don't we take trees from the forest in such a way that the Ngahea retains all of its other properties? We've actually done three trial logings of tortura in the north, which do exactly that. And a year after those trees have been taken out, you can't see where they were taken from. So it is possible to do this. And right from the beginning, Tarnish Tree Trust said, the way to get people to actually value forest is to ask them what are all the values, which includes the value of the timber. And if they're able to take that value out, then well and good. So that's continuous cover of forestry. I could go on. We're obviously living in a climate crisis. Yes. What is the contribution and Ramona or Sheridan perhaps? What's the role of native forestry in addressing climate change? What capacity does our native forest have for sequestering forestry? What capacity does our native forest have for sequestering carbon, for instance? I'll let Sheridan answer first, and then I can back her up. That's okay. Yeah. I guess for me in that sort of ideal world, it's the long-term solution for sequestering carbon for climate change forever, basically. The slower build, but after that, those trees are going to be on the land for a longer time in terms of climate change and then not only like off-setting, but they're going to continue to be in our landscape forever. We're not just trying to off-set emissions anymore. We'll just be actively sequestering that carbon forever. And that's native forest and that's not the current exotic forestry model that we have. The interesting thing is that New Zealand hasn't been able to quantify the sequestering capability of native trees to this point. And Sion... Sorry, we have. Let's finish that thought, Ramona, and then we'll come back to work. I'm not quite finished with that. I'm talking in terms of the ETS. And the ETS and its ability to quantify the sequestering capability of trees as a tool, I guess, for climate change mitigation. And one of the things... We had an ETS workshop here. Well, not a workshop, a regulations review with Te Ao Māori a couple of weeks ago here. And one of the things that came through quite strongly was the message that Nahiri is an intergenerational solution. It's a solution that could last 800 years. And that, yes, radiata pine and potentially other exotic species might grow faster in the short term. But if we're thinking about the generations to come and about the world that we're trying to prepare for, or prepare the foundations for, then we need to look into generationally. And this, again, is a failing, I might put it that way, of our view of forests, our national view of forests, our accepted national view of forests, is that forests are things that you put in the ground and then you cut them down at 27 or 30 or 50 years and then they grow back. Well, there is another type of forest that lasts a longer time. That does take a little while to ramp up and get going. But once it does, it has the potential to provide an intergenerational climate change mitigation for our nation and for the world. And I think what's here is an opportunity for New Zealand to show the world other parts of the colonised world how to do this. We've got an opportunity to redefine the benefits of forestry. Forestry and indigenous species. Warwick. Tani's tree trust has produced a carbon calculator which is based on, by far, the biggest data set of native forests, far bigger than forest research ever had. It's been generated by our own staff. We've produced a carbon calculator which is based on real data. We know exactly how much carbon the trees can, but unfortunately the look-up tables produced by MPI were produced on a very narrow set of very young trees. And we know that native trees grow very slowly when they're young. So we have two data sets. The MPI look-up tables for ETS actually do not do justice whatsoever to the potential of native forests to surface to carbon. Let me give you an example. And this is a real-world example. Trees like Kaori and Todra and even possibly Rima, particularly those two, when they get up and going after about 20 or 30 years, can be putting on between 12 and 18 cubic meters of timber a year per hectare. And of course we've been blindsided by radiator at the same time radiators putting on 30 or 40. And so having been blindsided by radiator, we can't see past it. We can't see that in the long-term our native forests are going to hold up much more carbon and it will go on doing it for 300 years. And let's compare what we've done in New Zealand to what the average rate of forest production in North America with the softwoods there is about 14. And Kaori and Todra will do exactly that. So our problem is that radiator is something right out way beyond virtually anything else in the world. So we've got to come back to reality and reality and one of the things that we in Tarnash Free Trust have been trying to emphasise is the heritage value of forests, the long-term benefits and farmers are getting it. Unfortunately our farms turn over once every 10 years. That's a pity. The heritage values for the long-term. I would say that science has a role to play in advancing the ability of our native species to help in the climate you know climate issue. Science applied to nature can help to accelerate the rate of sequestration. So the same science that has been applied to radiator pine can essentially be applied to our native species. So there is a lot of hope there and the regulators or the decision makers about what species to plant where I think are starting to understand and open their minds to the wider possibility of what Nahiri can offer to our nation and those full range of benefits that you talked about both the tangible and the intangible are so important and they identify us as a nation. Radiator pine that's a story that we can tell as a nation but as a New Zealander I'd like to back a tree that comes that is endemic from this land and just the way it lights up when we talk about Nahiri people just light up so there's so many good reasons. Great question here from one of our participants Keith Dark from Tasmania is saying that Tasmania has fantastic forests as well quite incredible stands of forests but our state government seems intent to develop tourism ventures over retaining our natural asset in an undeveloped state How is New Zealand managing these development pressures? Do any of you have a point of view about the impact that eco-tourism has both positive and negative on our native forests? I know that the government is trying to balance the landscape values against the heritage values. There are the way they're classifying land and what you can plant on land speaks to that. There is a commitment to ensuring that our distinctive landscapes remain and that we are making a conscious decision about what to plant where. I think we've got a little way to go though. I think that there are other voices that need to be heard. Tani's Tree Trust is one of those Farm Foresters Association Māori and just your general New Zealander I think need to be engaged in that conversation. This climate change strategy which is on its way and we all know it's coming is going to is responsible for a change in a lot of policy. The RMA is going to be replaced by a number of different things. The ETS the way we treat biodiversity and indigenous species. Conservation I think you'll find will start to disappear from the language and we'll start to use more holistic and more New Zealand specific terms to describe things. I think that if I were able to influence the state government over there in Australia I would say that they should listen to their people. They should definitely listen to their indigenous people and they should definitely listen to their citizens and their people. Just the general those communities of practice that are passionate about ensuring the survival of biodiversity and indigenous species because when we remove these species off the landscape then a little bit of our identity and our culture and our heritage goes with that. It comes back to this holistic integrated all the benefits seen as in their whole sense not just the individual and carbon sequestration again is kind of one of those it's a vertical isn't it and seen on its own you would send you down a path of ignoring the benefits of forests as a whole all of which was a way of saying we've got a great question here from Dame Anne Salmond who has joined our kōrero and she's saying do we really understand how native forests not just native trees sequester carbon everything in the Nahiri works together including the fungal communities underground as far as I know there has been very little hole of forest research into carbon sequestration in Aotearoa that inquires into all the elements of the Nahiri including the plants and fungal communities is that true that we don't have a sense of what's above and what's below? Having done that very thing for Kauri Forest I think we do have some understanding of that the underground fungal activity of course is enormous it's not being sequestered just being redistributed down there the sequestering sides of the leaf but then of course the storage of carbon in the Kauri Forest is absolutely staggering you've got a leaf litter layer that's up to two meters deep and it's just loaded with carbon and it's at a pH of 2.8 it's not going to lose its carbon very quickly so yes we have an understanding of some of our old potocarp forests there's been some beautiful work done on the South Island by Alan Mark there so I think we do have an understanding and translating overseas work to our own forests gives us a pretty good understanding but can I just touch on the question that you just posed the previous question I've taken visitors to this country to remove forests to Matai Forest to Kauri Forest and they're absolutely bold over by it it is a magical experience for them and you can turn it into one for them by talking about the Nahiri and if it's done by local iwi it has another dimension to it which actually can be a wonderful tourist experience and we must capitalise on that I think we have a great opportunity and that's what you should remember in Tasmania if they did it that way you would add enormous value to that tourist experience so it's not one or the other it's a plus it's an end seems to be critical well there's a good question here and this might be one for you Sheridan about what does success look like in terms of I don't know this question is about total forest cover if we're down to 30% what percentage looks like a good number to get to but that perhaps is one version of a bigger question what does success look like overall and you've written a great piece in the whole series about what the future looks like so tell us what 100 years from now when you're bouncing a mokapuna on your knee by some miracle you'll be 121 I guess when I look at the future with this sort of blue sky thinking what I would love to see the future look like is that whole change of values and profits that goes along with what Warwick and Ramona are talking about that people understand that this money thing isn't what's going to make you happy you know like just a little bit happy but just the whole understanding of it so what will make you happy is fresh air, clean water a beautiful surrounding when you walk out your front door when you go down the road when you do have your mokapuna with you and you're going out to go biking or just go for a walk through the forest what will New Zealand look like I hope that we can keep working towards changing people's perceptions around what they value from their environment and basically I think that needs to start yesterday the longer we leave not prioritising natives in the landscape and where they fit what would it look like right now if we'd put the same sort of investment into natives in terms of research and money that we did with radiata 100% over to you Sion we should start we can do it we should start with putting native forest into the headwaters of every stream it's steep country and this is where it starts if you look at the video that we've turned out and you'll see Ian drinking water in the stream that he has revegetated with native forest he's taken his high country he's got six streams which originate on his property he's creating a native forest in every one of those uppercashments they're quite steep but he's doing a brilliant job and I think that will be an aim to start with to revegetate the headwaters they're not much use for anything else really if I was stock concerned they're very steep and that's where our settlement is coming from and I think coming back to Sheridan's vision for the future and what she's talking about there I think is a redistribution of wealth a redefinition of what wealth is would be one thing and a redistribution of wealth I think would go a long way to New Zealand being able to you know to set up a future for our muka pina one that they want to be a part of and what does that redistribution of wealth look like it starts with planting at the headwaters but Iwi Maori I'll say Mana whenua don't even have the resources right now to replant the lands that have been degraded so I think there needs to be a recalibration a recalibration of many things something along the lines of what Sheridan's talking about in terms of shared values we need to look at what New Zealand stands for as a nation and then recalibrate according to that there's an economic equation there always has to be but should it be the central point of all decisions is GDP the only thing that we should measure well being by all of that stuff Interesting going to the point about the land that is steep, unfarmable has previously been called kind of wasteland and I know that's something that Maori really resist isn't it Ramana because what's wasteful about a hilltop Well we generally the indigenous thinkers would also resist the idea of fighting climate change you know I think if we were to think of the natural world as having its own ability to manage itself and to renew and revitalise and reinvigorate itself I think the only thing we as a human race need to do is manage our impact on the landscape on the land and if we are able to do that then I think we get a very different we get a very different result and when you think about things like how we manage the impacts of erosion et cetera what about just retiring spaces the idea of retiring spaces into permanent forest what's wrong with that it's happening naturally in the north over 100,000 hectares of hill country land that was found 30 years ago when the subsidies came off it was not economic so the farmers walked away what happened became a moniker forest the birds flew the seeds of tortura into it it's now becoming a tortura forest there's over 100,000 hectares of land that is naturally becoming a tortura forest it's a brilliant thing to be watching and this is where one of our members Paul Quinnan is doing his research and is doing a trial extraction of tortura and it's working magnificently Paul's a great guy and he applies that principle of reciprocity that's what we're talking about we've got a reciprocal relationship with nature if we look after nature nature will look after us can I just I'm going to finish with something that Kerry Allen has written in Forest and Bird and we think of Kerry right now because she's undergoing enormous problems in her own life and we should be praying for Kerry right now but a very perceptive lady let me read what she's written our anchor bell with us and Tanei's treat us for myself in particular she says, my focus is probably multifaceted in the te al Māori arena we conserve the environment by being able to use the environment and that might be a different experience for some who see conservation as something you lock up and leave it my belief is firmly held that we can serve the fenawa and we can serve the tyre by ensuring that we can use the tyre Ngā i'r paviratale kiri beth mae  gerçekbapu te baboarek, i'r teikoi gerai te i Monkoroa noro a kai i teisiru siwana k Yupoarek, i tuwiais i maiai a kui apada palau. A pababu a i teisiru a mihau te i mluja, pwnau mwai ndarawe A huwMaster Ngai. to end on, and I wonder whether we have just opened a massive can of worms with all this discussion that is basically a series of unresolved questions. At the great news is that we have six more websites to go where we can drill into each one of these topics in greater depth, whether it's climate change, whether it's preserving forests from pests, whether it's continuous cover forestry. We have a terrific bunch of contributors lined up to talk who have also written for us on the website, the Ōtata and the Heady Pure Advantage website. So I would really like to take this moment to thank our guests for joining us, for firing in so many questions, and I do apologise that I've only got to a fraction of them. Please keep them coming. We will endeavour. You probably can't see them, but we have a team of crack helpers over there who are answering the questions for you in the text field. So thanks for joining us. Please join us again next week, every Tuesday at the same time. And I also would really like to thank our panellists, Professor Warwick-Salvestre, Sheridan Ashford and Ramona Redford. Thank you for joining us and I hope you and wish you a very good evening. Thanks everybody.