 Kia ora 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, Ōtātu Nāheri, or Our Forest, and it's produced by Pure Advantage and Tanei's 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 Tanei's 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. In 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 Tanei's 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 and simply add them to the chat and I'll do my best to put them to the panelists 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, kapaarangi te maunga, keuta ki rangiawha, ko tainui waka, ko ngaitai iwi, ko tori renui arua te marai. So I'm Ramona Redford. 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 Nahiri. 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, 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, Kiora. 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. I've turned into tree trust 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'd 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 were 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 Tarnage Tree Trust. We'll talk a little bit more about Tarnage Tree Trust 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 Kaori 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. And 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 to them in greater detail. But tell us now, who are you and why do forests matter to you? Okay, cool. Thanks Vincent. I work in commercial plantation, exotic forestry. That'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 and sort of what turns me on. And not just for native forest but exotics as well. All forestry. Yeah, I think it's just this part of our landscape that 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 per cent forest. There's very good records of that. When Europeans arrived here, there was about 50 per cent cover of the country as in forest. Today, we've got 30 per cent. 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 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 per cent 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, has been 12 per cent of forest. But when you compare New Zealand with other areas, 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 guessed how much they've gone for. 67 per cent 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. In fact, 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, I digress. So we have decimated the amount of forest we've actually ruined a lot of the habitat. I could go into that at a great length, 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 and I 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. And 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 kiwi. And then a few minutes later we saw two tuatara. And so on went on. If you 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 forest 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 ao marama, light of day, te hai Māori ora, their is life. During this time, the earth and the sky were formed and came into being. Kō ranginui, ka moi i a papatuanuku, ka puta ki waho. Kō tane, nuia rangi. So ranginui and 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 nahiri mean to Te Ao Māori? As a word, nahiri 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 nahiri 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 it's not one 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 nahiri means to me, 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 Warak has said is no more their 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 nahiri is everything it's our teacher it's our teaching curriculum it's our food basket it's our medicine cupboard it's it's you know as we know it's become understood as the lungs of the earth so the nahiri te ao Māori is everything it's interesting Warak 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 and you had this beautiful phrase think like a forest can you expand on that a little bit and 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 tāia because that's the word that captures all of this the Māori word tāia I hope my pronunciation is okay Ramona tāia not tāiau which means slow down tāiau is the word which captures exactly what you're saying the other things because what that says is that the forest is a combination of a whole lot of things like in European terms it was the term oikos which has become ecology and which says that the natural systems are a combination of the soil, the water the climate and the organisms that in it and 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 it's 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 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 you know it is something that's kind of behind a fence isn't it and what the challenges from what Tarnes 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 at university I've graduated relatively recently apart from I think a few papers in first year native forestry probably wasn't part of our learning because as far as like a professional forester is concerned that native forestry is locked up you know it's not for foresting to us so getting involved with pure advantage and learning more about Tarnes Tree Trust and even just listening to Ramona talk it's sort of 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 that's interesting 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 the 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 well 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 yeah continuous cover forest tree 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 I think 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 for in as far as New Zealand is concerned and in that act it that was written at a time 1949 at which 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 a rethink about how we treated these Ngahere or the remnants of what was once the great forest of Tane and I think about the use of the word forestry when we refer to the Ngahere and as an indigenous person that kind of gives me 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 tree farms for purposes that may extend beyond the the current notion of what forestry is because we've built an industry here that you know 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 resources so when I think about the future of what Ngahere 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 Ngahere 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 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 Ngahere and we should treat it specially you know as a result and wealth in its biggest sense would still capture that but I guess what if I could interpret what I thought 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 and a full ecological and a spiritual sense also a holistic approach to wealth the context that I led you know into this part of the discussion was around colonisation and the idea of colonisation was to go to the near the most parts of the world and then send those 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 antipodies this in Australia as the antipodies the near the most parts from the motherland I think is later and we're still operating as a nation on that model and when we're thinking about Nahire, 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 so tell us expand what are the full benefits of there are a whole lot of points there Remainer I'd like to take up on the first one is that Maori right from the very beginning did continuous cover forestry in the Nahire they would take a tree out make a canoe out of it they would take septings out and build buildings they treated it as continuous cover forestry for like 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 it may be 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 softwood 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 nahi retains all of its other properties we've actually done three trial logings of torturer in the north which do exactly that and a year after those trees have been taken out we're 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 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 carbon for instance Sheridan answer first and then I can back her up that's okay I guess for me in that sort of ideal world it's the long term solution for sequestering carbon for climate change forever basically it's sort of the slower build but after that it's those trees are going to be on the land for a longer time and in terms of climate change and then not only like offsetting but they're going to continue to be in our landscape forever like we're not just trying to offset emissions anymore we'll just be actively sequestering that carbon forever and that's native forest and that's not the 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 Wara I'm not quite finished with that I'm talking in terms of the ETS and ETS and its ability to quantify the 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 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 made out of 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 to to prepare for you know 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 cowery and tortura and even possibly remover 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 radiata at the same time radiata is putting on 30 or 40 and so having been blindsided by radiata 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 we'll go on doing it for three or four hundred years and let's compare what we've done in UCL the average rate of forest production in North America with the softwoods there is about 14 and cowery and tortura will do exactly that so we're right up there our problem is that radiata is something right out way beyond 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 emphasize is the heritage value of forest the long term benefits and farmers are getting it unfortunately our farms turn over once every ten years but there are heritage values for the long term Hi Katie Tikka science has a role to play in advancing the ability of of our native species to help in the climate you know climate issue science applied to nature can help to to accelerate the rate of sequestration so the same science that has been applied to radiata 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 to the wider possibility of what Nahiri can offer to our nation and those full range of benefits that you talked about were both the tangible and the intangible are so important and they identify us as a nation you know radiata pine yes that's a story that we can tell as a nation but as a New Zealander you know I'd like to back a tree that comes that is endemic from this land and just the way it lights up people you know when we talk about Nahiri people just light up so there's so many great question here from one of our participants Keith Dark from Tasmania is saying that Tasmania has fantastic forests as well quite incredible but our state government 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 ecotourism 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 that we're 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 the most farm foresters association Māori and you know 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 we all know it's coming we all know it's coming 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 kind of start to to disappear from the language and we'll start to use more holistic more New Zealand-specific terms to describe things I think 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 andemic 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 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 about 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 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 sites of the leaf but then of course the storage of carbon and 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 at some of our old pota-carp forests there's been some beautiful work done on the South Island by Alan Mark on the total carbon storage there so I think we do have an understanding and translating overseas work to our own forests I think gives us a pretty good understanding of that I'll just touch on the question that you just posed the previous question I've taken visitors to this country to remove forests to matai forests to kauri forests 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 Ngahiri 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 said Ramona 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 plus and seems to be critical there's a good question here you share it in about what does success look like in terms of 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 which is 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 it is 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 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 just a little bit happy wow but just the whole understanding of it 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 yeah 100% over to you Sion we should start can do it we should start with putting native forest in the headwaters of every stream it's a steep country and this is where it starts if you look at the video that we've turned out and you'll see in 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 as far as stock concerned they're very steep but they arise quickly and that's where our settlement's coming from and I think coming back to Asheridan's vision for the future 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 that redistribution of wealth look like it starts with planting at the headwaters but iwi Māori 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 Asheridan'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 and yes there's an economic equation there always has to be but 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 Māori really resist isn't it Ramana because what's wasteful about a hilltop Well we generally the indigenous thinkers in te al Māori 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 vitalise 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 you know 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 manuka forest the birds flew the seeds of tautura into it it's now becoming a tautura forest there's over 100,000 hectares of land that is naturally becoming a tautura forest it's a brilliant thing to be watching for our members Paul Quinn is doing his research and is doing a trial extraction of tautura 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 and that's can I just about I'm going to finish with something Kiri Allen has written in Forest and Bird and we think of Kiri right now because she's undergoing enormous problems in her own life and we should be praying for Kiri right now but a very perceptive lady I have to say let me read what she's written which really rang a bell with us and Tani's treatise for myself in particular she says my focus is probably multifaceted we can serve the environment by being able to use the environment and that might be a different experience for some we 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 I think very perceptive I really salute Kiri for making that saying that to Forest and Bird who are the prime lock up and leave it people well that's probably a brilliant note 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 the great news is that we have six more webisodes 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 on 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 to 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 same time and also I would really like to thank our panellists Professor Warwick Sylvester Sheridan Ashford and Ramona Radford thank you for joining us and I hope you and wish you a very good evening Thanks everybody No aerimoria