 Welcome everybody. Oh, we just said the poll pop up. Oh, can we see that again? Yeah, great. Thank you. So, nice mix there of foresters, science and academia, business and media, really good split, and lots of others. And it's also really good to see that some of you have read the content on the Otartana heady website, but a good deal of you haven't. And so that's exciting for us because if you visit pureadvantage.co.org, you'll see an absolute treasure trove of content there about the heady about the issues to do with native forests and the exciting opportunities ahead. So please do visit our website. All right, well, let's get on with the show. Thank you for joining us. My name is Vincent Herringer. I'm your host for this evening. And in this episode, we'll be discussing the vital importance of native forests to New Zealand and the world as we have been. I'm the host of our regenerative future season two Otartana heady or our forest and it's produced by pure advantage in Tanei's tree trust. And for these Webisodes, we are very grateful for the collaboration of the Edmund Hillary Fellowship, now wonderful assistant polar in Wellington. Over the years, over this year, pure advantage in Tanei's tree trust have taken a really deep dive into the regeneration of native forests as a source of natural spiritual and economic value. We've had a lot of momentum. We've had a lot of dialogue about the series online and also on this Webisodes series. Our ambition through these conversations, we hope to spark some cross sector dialogue and get people thinking about the potential of native forests in a regenerative and restorative economy. So welcome to episode three, how to grow a forest creating new native forests through transitioning planting and regenerating and into the future through sustainable forestry management. We're joined by two absolute experts in the topic, and we're very pleased to have Dr Adam Forbes and Paul Quinlan, both of whom have contributed actually to the series. And if you go to their article, if you go to pureadvantage.org, you'll find those articles and I think Simon is putting the links to their articles directly onto the chat. So if you want to see what Paul and Adam have written, you can see them there. All right, so just a little bit of housekeeping before we get going. I will let these guys introduce themselves, but we're happy to take your questions in the Q&A and please also keep an eye on the chat window because we'll be adding more information and links there. We're aiming to finish at 7.30, but again, that doesn't mean you have to. There's lots of information on our website and you can follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, and of course we'll be here next Tuesday. And a little bit of news, if you haven't seen the movie that we made, it's really worth a watch, absolutely gorgeous movie. And the good news is even more people will be watching that because it's tonight live on TV and Zed On Demand, which means our audience numbers for that will really explode as people engage in that gorgeous movie about farmer Ian Brennan from Waikato, who is doing a great job planting native Nahedi on his land. All right, just one other bit of housekeeping that is that we're here every Tuesday and we'll be continuing with this. So we'd really like you to spread the news about this Webisode series and about the conversation we're having here about forests and native forests in New Zealand. So please tell your friends, please email people the link. The link is the same every week that you've already clicked on and that will get you to all the Webisodes. All right. Well, so how to grow a forest? It is our challenge for the conversation tonight and I'm joined by Dr Adam Forbes and also Paul Quinlan. So we're really chaff to have you guys on the show. Thanks for joining us. And maybe Paul, I could throw to you. Introduce yourself. Who is Paul Quinlan? Well, thanks Vincent. Tena kouta katoa. Paul Quinlan tako ino e. Ino ana aho ke kai o i te tai tokorau. So I'm Paul Quinlan. I'm a landscape architect and a trustee with Tarnes Tree Trust. I convene the Northland Torture to Working Group. And I've been involved with the Torture to Industry Pilot project as well. And I'm a Northland Regional Advisor for Trees that Count. So I'm pleased to be here tonight. Thanks Vincent. Great. Thanks for joining us. Adam, how about you? What's your background and what do you love about native forests? Thank you very much. Thank you for having me. What is in there to love about native forests? There's not enough of them. That's what it's about. I know. It's a big topic too. Yeah, sorry. Look, I work as a forest ecologist. And I really these days specialise in native forest restoration and forest establishment. Done a bit of work over recent years around restoring clearfells. And it was employed part-time by Te Uda Dachau through the One Billion Trees Programme to travel around the country, helping people establish native forests, which was a real privilege. So, yeah, been doing quite a bit of work in forest restoration recently. Just momentarily lost my zoom, but I assume I'm still there. Great. Okay. Can't see myself, but you know, who cares? Adam, I'm really curious to know, last week we talked about where is the land going to come from? The Climate Change Commission has suggested that we aim for 300,000 hectares of new native forest in New Zealand. And the challenge with that, I suppose, is where is the land going to come from? And in fact, some people, even within peer advantage, are suggesting that maybe we could aim for a million hectares of new native forest. And so we talked about where would the land come from. But there's an additional challenge to this, Adam, which is, you know, should it all be new land as in, I don't know, pastoral farm land or former exotic forest? Or indeed, should we be looking at growing what already exists? I wonder if you have a point of view on that topic. I certainly do. I mean, I think a mix of both, but there's really little point in establishing new forest if we aren't managing the forest we've got appropriately. And I guess a reality in much of New Zealand at the moment is that we've got some real pressing issues and threats for native forests. So, you know, I think that in terms of where that land would come from, I think it's about land use change to achieve it at that scale. And, I mean, I've worked, I've been with landowners in this position. They're sort of teetering, trying to make decisions about where to retire land, what it means for their business, whether they can make money from it. So, I think that we need to be helping people at this time. I don't think we can just expect 300,000 hectares of forest to be established. I think we're going to need to be pretty active with helping people, whether that's reverting forest or planting. And, of course, a big part of this is looking after our existing forests and addressing those threats that they're facing. Well, you know, you are quite keen on seeing the whole existing and regenerating Nahiri grow. Can you tell us about the opportunities that exist from, you know, kind of what already exists? Yeah, I mean, I think that in some parts of New Zealand there are substantial opportunities. You know, where the climate's amenable to regeneration. So, in the long-held country where grazing pressure is pretty poor and where those pastures don't really contribute a lot. You know, North Canterbury have been working there with over 30 farmers and, you know, South West Faces and that landscape regenerate very well. And so, that's where I see that we've got major opportunities to do this at scale. And then it's about getting management right, getting advice right. So, getting on top of threats and, say, herbivory, really addressing that comprehensively so that forests can regenerate. Other issues like enrichment, planting, bringing back old-growth species that are just simply functionally extinct from landscapes. Yeah, so, you know, I guess the theme of what I'm saying is it's about land use change. These are serious decisions for farmers or for land owners. You know, they're generally permanent decisions that they're making. So, it's a good support around them to make them comfortable that they're making the right decision. I think if we don't do that, then many people will sit on the fence because they're just uncertain and, you know, that's not a situation we want to be in. Paul, you travel around the country advising people on transition from one type of land into native forests. What are the kind of key issues that you are finding that they are struggling with? Really good advice on some of these land use choices and what is appropriate and what's going to actually produce some sort of income and enable them to survive and yet, at the same time, do the things that they want to do in terms of the right thing by the land and the people of the future generations. But I'd like to just support what Adam said before there. I think it's really important how we integrate more native forests into the landscape. It's no longer appropriate just to be doing blanket land use, whether it's farming or forestry or we need to be much more sophisticated and really integrate native forests in where it's appropriate and that slogan, right tree, right place is a very good slogan and it is about appropriateness and site-specific. So is that kind of one of the key challenges is identifying what's unique about your particular parcel of land and figuring out what is the right approach. Is that kind of, it's almost like customising your own forest for your place? Yeah, I think that's a general principle that everyone will find that every bit of land is unique, has its own restraints and opportunities and challenges and the question of what's appropriate in terms of land use is to recite specific place specific. So that's the key and that's where people should start rather than arbitrarily just enforcing a land use where it may or may not be appropriate. Yeah, okay. We often hear about eco-sourcing. Can you explain that term or is that for making these kind of decisions when you're setting out to either start your own native forest journey or even sort of regenerate what's already there? What tell us about eco-sourcing? Well, that's a principle that is largely adopted. Trees that count Tarnes Tree Trust and many councils promote that. It's not without some debate about its merit but essentially it's about keeping some of the local genetic variation and uniqueness intact and alive. So preserving that for the future and if we're working with natural regeneration that occurs anyway and if we're planting then we need to be careful about where we can exceed from and making sure that we're continuing to support the natural diversity of the landscape. You're big on working with what already exists so you're kind of hinting at that already in there. There's a philosophy called near to nature forestry. Does that term capture what you're talking about and maybe you could expand on that a little? Near natural forestry is otherwise often called close to nature forestry. There's nature base forestry. These are often terms that are a little bit interchangeable. They come under the umbrella of continuous cover forestry which is it's more than just sustainability. It's about maintaining a more natural forest structure composition and really trying to manage a forest ecosystem taking a more holistic approach to manage it in that with emphasis on the ecosystem. So timber may be a product of that but there's a lot of other values that are being managed and integrated at the same time. It's a term that was really formalised Pro Silver in 1989 in Slovenia but before that there was a working group in Germany in the 1950s that were using that term and it's had history before that as well. So it's often used various terms used around the globe at present but they are really all about managing forests as a whole and as an ecosystem. Adam, is that a term or a practice that has become relevant in your advice to landowners in New Zealand? I haven't seen a huge interest in native forestry for timber across the country but certainly when I'm dealing with landowners and they wanting native forest establishment generally they're looking for an authentic naturalised forest system and like Paul's last point about eco sourcing that's a really good thing to be doing to be using it locally adapted species and thinking about the forest succession that you're setting up and how that will perform at its early stage but also in its later stages as well. So if you were approached by landowners and asked questions, Adam, are you asking them to consider before they start planting or before they start clearing in anticipation of doing more planting? What are the issues that you I guess are finding out there? Well, there's a few things there. One thing I really like people to consider is just to really sit down and think about what they're wanting from their forest. To me I can come and go on a site but for me it's important that people are heading in a direction they want to head in in terms of what they're going to do with the forest. So that's something to really think about in advance. The issues vary a little bit from, you know, different parts of the country. There are some areas where well, a lot of lowland New Zealand's sort of suffering from gradually increasing herbivore numbers, deer in particular, which has been encoded in some recent research from the conservation estate where similar trends have been brought to light over the last decade. So, you know, these are this is a really interesting and important topic for New Zealand because it's one that has social roots. I don't think we can say that we just get rid of deer. We eradicate them everywhere because they're important animals to people and we can't polarise communities. So, as a nation we've got some really tough work ahead of us to really find a balance point for this issue so that we can have healthy forests that are regenerating and people can, you know, have that element in their lives as well. So, Pes, a major issue to consider. What other issues are you coming up against that people really need advice about? Just fundamentally how to establish forest. It might sound funny, but depending on where you are in the country and the climate and the circumstances, you take a completely different approach. So, you know, if we're on the Canterbury plains, for instance, with 600 miles of rainfall per annum, we're going to have to be really active with establishing natives and we're going to have to be potentially watering. We can't expect a lot of natural regeneration. So, things are going to be very active, whereas if we were, you know, in whole country in North Canterbury or in Tairafati, we can, you know, we can expect more natural regeneration, which puts us in a completely different position. We can be more passive and we can tackle restoration at scale just sort of thinking more about threats. So, a large part of what I find myself doing is just simply resolving for the landowner what is the approach. You put your money to be successful and, you know, once I think of it of this sort of active, passive continuum depending on your regeneration potential. So, it's about deciding where that property is on that continuum and once you've established that, actually a few things fall into place. You have a good understanding what's scaled according to their budget, you know, what scale we're talking about covering and, you know, whether we're talking about planting it at 1.5 metre centres or whether we're actually just talking about some enrichment planting as seed islands or some other sort of more passive approach. So, yeah, that's really important and I think there's a lot more need for that advice. Like, you know, it became apparent to me that how many forestry advisers are there in New Zealand that are giving advice on exotic forestry establishment. There's quite a few that probably come to your property at no cost and then how many native forest advisers are very few around it. So, people have to call on their personal contacts or maybe call on someone from a university or something. So, you know, this 300,000 hectares just to repeat again probably needs some serious advice around it if we're going to be successful. Paul, you're a busy guy. Where are you being called to and what kind of places are seeking out your advice? I'm based up in the far north but cover much of Northland and beyond but there's huge interest in planting native forest and particularly on former pine forest land or harvested land where landowners are would like to actually have some other options rather than just doing another rotation of pine or integrating some native forest into their land and so... What's their motivation, do you think, Paul? Is there a commercial element to what they're doing? Is there any commonality amongst your clients? Various considerably. Some are purely ecologically driven. Others want to have some commercial aspect some productive potential there that's quite common and that's the thing about native forest is that they provide such an array or values. That is their feature the multiple values that they provide so I think it will always be a case of the many benefits that come along with it so from all the soil and water conservation values right through to landscape amenity values but also some potential productive value. You know that issue but the opportunity that exists of once a exotic forest is harvested and you're more or less starting with a blank canvas or at least as someone speeding past in a car it's a blank canvas obviously it's not there there's soil and there are issues and there's climate and all the stuff to consider Adam what is the potential for transitioning from pine into native forest and we know there are some companies and operators in New Zealand trying to do this at scale right who are moving with the promises to move from exotics into natives over time and I believe that you've done quite a lot of science around this and research at least made a start at it Yeah that's right I completed a PhD on the topic and I've been doing more research on the topic since I feel this is a very important opportunity for New Zealand it's one of I think for forestry we need a number of options and this is one option that we need to work on in some locations of New Zealand so it lends itself well to warm wetter climates where they occur around the country in areas where you don't have those conditions you're going to have to be quite active on the active passive continuum you're going to have to step in and make up for shortfalls that aren't occurring naturally but you know on Just a really quick interruption on that active sorry you know what kind of things are you including in active obviously you mentioned pest management and that's always going to be an issue what other kind of active considerations would there be Well because pine plantations, if we're talking about pine plantations they're single-waged monocultures so they're very homogenous so opening up canopy gaps mimicking that gap phase regeneration that occurs in natural forests is a really important one we've done experimental work around that and we've got a good idea what size gaps and what shape gaps and how we can create them planting to overcome dispersal limitations another quite crucial one and probably most of our landscapes where seed sources are pretty scarce or maybe dispersers aren't quite doing the job or in climates where regeneration is just not very strong at planting would be more important there too so in terms of rolling this out at scale I don't think we're there yet I think that where we're at at the moment is we need management scale trials I think that's an appropriate scale to be doing this at that is what we need in fact certainly we need to be doing and learning we've sort of done some science but I think now is a time to be dedicating parts of land and parts of existing forest to this and giving it a try so I think trying to attempt this at thousands and thousands of hectares is not the right approach right now and it's also a long game our forest species are pretty slow growing nothing happens in a hurry so we need to set these up as trials and monitor them and I guess that's another thing that bothers me a little bit about if this is being made into a business model and corporatised as it were are these people actually going to be around for decades to actually adaptively manage these forests if they're really doing it at that scale it sounds incredibly attractive Paul, the idea of particularly in context of climate mitigation of taking planting now in exotics to do some of the heavy lifting of carbon sequestration as we sort of move into this low emissions economy with a view to then moving into longer term native Nahiri from your point of view are you excited about that opportunity or do you share some of Adam's concerns just about how realistic that is I think I agree with Adam that it certainly has mirrors we need to take a slightly precautionary approach to some extent and just learn how to do this and this adaptive management approach is essential we're going to have to be monitoring learning and it may require in some sites considerable active input intervention and that might be in the long term that might be in a hundred eighty a hundred years time so I am concerned about any assumptions that it's a simple plant and leave type proposition I don't think any land actually has that land always requires management and there's costs and responsibilities associated with that and I hope that some of these efforts or these ideas of just planting an exotic plantation and expecting it to transition naturally to native forest I hope that there's sufficient budget there for management that may be required to ensure that that does indeed occur and at present I think the danger is that the short term incentives are not there to encourage that long term appropriate management This could be quite a good question for you there's a question here from someone called Anonymous they seem to crop up often in such debates this is a question about the potential for fragmented native forest blocks that are kind of integrated sometimes in corridors or co-located but still in a pastoral setting the potential for these clumps effectively of native forest to work together to create an overall ecosystem is that a realistic expectation that you could I suppose contribute to the overall biodiversity of New Zealand by taking this sort of piecemeal approach I think there's definite benefits in having a matrix of native forest woven through the landscape the pastoral landscape I think David Norton's done some excellent research on that showing how valuable that is to connect between conservation and state land areas I understand we simply don't have sufficient land and conservation estate to actually maintain all the biodiversity and things we require we need to up the game between those conservation areas and therefore we do need to just weave it into our production landscape as well and yet so many of those places are taken an industrial approach to farming don't they where every scrap of land is devoted particularly to dairy can you foresee a time there's a question here from Mel Whiting about the time for instance when the Canterbury Plains might be pocketed with native forest to work in association or alongside that sort of industrial scale dairy it's important to try and integrate it in for many for many reasons I think the challenge is to where are the incentives for the land owner to do so and that's if we envisage that if that's what we have as a goal then we need to also make provide the incentives to enable that to happen and no doubt that it's possible and so I think that it's simply we just need to engineer our cultural systems, our economic systems to be conducive to that We've talked in previous episodes about incentives and talked about the potential for timber from native forests obviously a number of barriers to those but Paul you've been part of a really interesting project in the far north to do with Tautra I wonder if you could tell us about potential for what that exercise has shown you about what could be harvested from native forest It's a long running project that's focused on the naturally regenerating environment in Northland which is quite a phenomenon it's maybe hard for people outside the region to really imagine but Tautra comes up so prolifically that some land owners regarded as a weed relatively stock resistant like Manuka and Karnaka and Gorse and comes up often in a grazed environment and so as a consequence of the land clearance and persistent farming activities and the presence of livestock through the regenerating scrub cover we actually have extensive areas of native forest cover that are now predominantly well Tautra is the predominant canopy tree species within it and some of those have regenerated on previously cleared of millable sized trees so it's an opportunity to integrate native forest species and native forest into that working landscape we started the Northland Tautra Working Group in 2005 Helen Moody from the New Zealand Land Care Trust and David Bergen from Tarnes Tree Trust were key instigators of that and since then we've run many funded projects mostly funded by the Sustainable Farming Fund looking at the potential to sustainably manage this for not just timber production sustainable timber production but also for the non-timber benefits that come along with it we've run silver culture trials we've done wood testing we've done a regional inventory of how much is out there we've surveyed the use of the timber and all of these projects have really returned encouraging results and really we can say that it's an excellent software timber with excellent potential for sustainable management and it provides a really practical opportunity to actually get more native forest particularly into pastoral landscapes Paul, can you quantify the price differential between Mil Tautra and Pine? It varies really Tautra is a fine native softwood species the young regenerating farm Tautra often sells as kiln dried and finished timber for around $3,000 a cube or more and the heart would sell considerably more than that upwards of $4,500 for clear heart but it's not easy to compare there's a lot less volume associated with it it's a sustainable timber there's a lot of costs associated with it and really I think a key point is the management of this or the impetus why are we interested in trying to promote the sustainable management of this is not about timber it's about all the benefits that come along with native forest it's about encouraging native forest as a land use and Tautra is like carbon or payment for ecosystem services it's just some form of vehicle to incentivise it as a land use but it does indeed have to be one of the values doesn't it Adam if we are serious about planting or regenerating and nurturing at scale at least one of the motivations has to be the commercial return of timber Yeah I think that's a very real thing I think attitudes or values differ widely among people but certainly for a sector of society when they're making land use decisions around native vegetation on their land they really do want to know what the income streams are and I think timber is a really important option it's a really important part of the mix I'd like to comment on that Vincent I think it's one potential income stream that will be appropriate in some areas and not in others and I think native forest really requires moldable income streams timber is one potential and carbon is another although huge area of young regenerated native forest predates 1990 and is ineligible to be in the ETS and the other thing is land owners at present there's no ability for them to realise any value from the ecosystem services or biodiversity values that native forest and their land provide between those three things I think some forests will be a different weighting of any of those values some forests native shrub lands and they won't have much potential for carbon sequestration or timber but they will have biodiversity value and so all those different potential income streams I think are needed to incentivise native forest cover Adam there's a really great question here from Mark Dean about the role of riparian planting and recovery efforts is that beyond mere compliance or even if it isn't is riparian planting making a difference it's a good question is it making a difference I guess I'd come at it from a different angle and that is about stream ecosystems and they evolved over a very long time under forest cover so the life in streams really is adapted to having canopy cover so I guess it depends what you're going to measure and how you measure it as to whether you decide it's going to work but it's the definition of success is what you say well I think returning forest cover to streams is fundamentally the right thing to do and there might be some expectations of riparian systems and whether they're actually delivering on those they're not very good at addressing nitrogen issues so yeah I just think that returning forest cover to streams is fundamentally the right thing to be doing OK well let me be more specific then if the measure of success is increasing at scale the amount of New Zealand native forest riparian planting making a difference I would think so I think that if it's increasing native cover in our lowlands then that's a step in the right direction definitely you know it's our lowland environments really that have been so heavily depleted of forest cover and we know enough about the science to know that once you get below certain thresholds of cover there's greater incremental loss of biodiversity so if riparian forests are one avenue for returning forest cover to our lowlands I think it would be important in that respect Paul mentioned earlier about the the the reality in the north of tautra coming back almost as a pest as if it kind of has always been there is there a I don't want to turn it into magic if left alone for long enough will indeed native trees native forest come back to I don't know if you talk about say marginal land that has been abandoned because it might have been too hard to farm or indeed the farm was unproductive is there if left long enough would native forest return Adam depends on some particular circumstances so if you have the right climate and if you have really good local seed sources, diverse old growth seed sources and if you have good populations of disperses then you've got the basic ingredients for species to be returning naturally but I think in a lot of areas of New Zealand we're going to have to be a bit more active than that and it's not just kind of a passive approach, it's about stepping in and just bridging those natural shortcomings there's a great question here again perhaps for you Adam that from Bill Dike who's one of the contributors to the Otatana Heli program where native trees are planted using nursery stock there's some concern about moving pathogens such as phytophora from nurseries to the forest site there is a new plant production biosecurity scheme that will reduce biosecurity risk but it does not guarantee pathogen free plants this is a particular concern is that a concern for you Adam and if it is what could be done about it it's a little bit outside my area of expertise to be honest do you have any comments Paul yeah colleague Jackie Amers Tarnes Tree Trust and David Bergen have done a lot of work on this and so I think Jackie is on a webisode next week she'd be the ideal person to answer that so certainly an issue that's on the radar but it's outside my area of knowledge is it something that could be I'm not going to hold you to the science of this but would eco sourcing address some of those issues if the pathogens are being introduced from other parts of the country does that make a case more for eco sourcing it's more about nursery hygiene because even with eco sourcing you may collect the seed from one area and have them grown in a commercial nursery somewhere else so there's quite a few logistical issues there to address yeah we have a really good question here from Rebecca Breen who owns 7,500 square metres of established native books in the Waitakere's and she's been doing lots of hand-weeding and when not using any herbicides she sounds like she's putting really in the mahi well done Rebecca but her question is is there an organisation that she could turn to for practical help with doing some of that hard work and perhaps more broadly are you finding you to chaps across New Zealand is there a growing network of supporters of workers, of science of intel around that could help people like Rebecca? I guess what I've seen in different parts of the country there's usually at least one or two ecologists like a contractor consulting ecologists that are available and they generally have an excellent local knowledge and usually a very good rapport with locals too so that's kind of the go-to that I've seen as people employing a contractor to come in and deal with particular issues How about you Paul? There's some good information on the Tane Street Trust website and there'll be a lot of fact sheets and more information there that's free to download for people there's organisations trees that count are able to fund some trees to planters and they apply and of course for larger scale planting the billion trees was a great boost and assistance it's only a subsidy it doesn't cover all the costs but it still all helps and there's a need to for people planting large areas of native forest to get whatever assistance they can because it is an expensive long-term commitment so I think really back to a key point is that there needs to be an awful lot more to help encourage and support native forest planting but not just the planting also the management ongoing management The ongoing management and also the science and research Adam you were sort of hinting at the before just how much effort has gone into exotics and the forest industry but you're seeing a real lack of knowledge around secrets of our native forest is that right? Yeah I do really see that. I think it can be quite difficult for people to connect and get expert advice particularly in an affordable manner and I see that if we're going to be really establishing native forest more than just planting natives but thinking technically about how forest ecosystems are evolving and what their needs are I think we actually need more of a base of students trained in this to be coming through and training is one thing we need a career path for people because you know what it's like you leave university and you actually want a stable job and you want to know that you can achieve some certain things so I think that this is I see it as an emerging part of forestry and I purposely call it the forestry and I just think we need to gear up with training and funding careers and jobs to bring our capacity in this space Is there any particular a gap at the moment that is more urgent than others? Well there's a very big gap I think is the point in every area Yeah There's very few obvious career paths down this topic of managing reversion making decisions about native forest establishment you know perhaps working in a council and working alongside landowners and restorations one thing but I think that there needs to be more than that and there's almost private sector kind of niches just like what I've been doing, lucky enough to have been doing over the last couple of years to actually have a contract to out be out there helping people at the coal face and bringing science so that they can benefit from that directly It was pretty interesting in the very first episode we had Sheridan Ashford who is the co-president of Future Forest is a young woman who is not just excited about forestry in general but kind of excited about the potential of native forest which is not something she'd been typically exposed to and finds herself really in an aging workforce but full of opportunity so from a career point of view she was pretty excited about the potential for ongoing employment lots of opportunities opening up as they are aging foresters probably what do you do when you're an aging forester Simon you plant more trees you plant more trees but yes so great opportunities they're emerging for young people and I was thinking also as you were talking Madam about the potential for technology right so we've talked about land use, we've talked about planting and talked about science but here's a question from Calamarn Strong about the potential for technology in plantings, there are some great initiatives in the works of drone planting for example with more for efficiency sake do other of you see potential for the scale issue being addressed through technology start with you happy to answer that but on that last point I'd just like to say this is a hellish exciting time for forestry in New Zealand and I think we're really at an opportunity to really set a really important direction for the future you know this is about trying to find the solutions and the answers to address the climate change crisis and biodiversity crisis and fresh water issues you know this is it's a fascinating little challenge, I've often referred to it as like the Rubik's Cube you know you're trying to crack this and native forestry or native forests have such a role an essential role to play in this and so for any young people wanting to change the world or you know really find the answers this is a great field to be engaged with anyway that's onto this topic technology yeah sorry about that but technology is we always need to have an open mind to that and be looking to see what the possibilities are and keep working on that but essentially we've got birds and nature doing things at scale that we couldn't hope to do and you know that is the key that we need to work with that big natural process and learn to just compliment that plant strategically invest our efforts strategically to lever off that and in some situations there may be technological breakthroughs that assist but you know it's working with nature learning how to do that is going to is the most important priority at present how about you Adam are you seeing the involvement of technology and technologists in your work not so much I have to say nothing really jumps to mind I think one of the main areas that we need to be working on in a technological sense of the pest issues like just been working in Nelson and the old man's bed issue is just horrendous there's really major problems there and I'm just working with landowners trying to help them through and coming up with plans and helping them prioritise where to put money and I think if we could really make some inroads on these major pest issues for New Zealand it's going to mean people can do more at least for us will be more stable and it's just going to be a much better situation to be in I do know the work of Grant Ryan with project cacophony I don't know if you've come across that Christchurch technologist who was sick of possums eating his bg's and he has figured out that you can attract possums not just smell but with sound and so is experimenting with using the mating calls and the booming sounds of male possums to could be female possums to attract the male possums in any case he's using sound as a bait and then effectively shooting them with his poison paintball gun which I know sounds real science fiction but it's kind of the point really you know that technologists bring a different kind of perspective into this task yeah I can imagine and I think it'll probably be the things that none of us are thinking right now that really the breakthrough is in the future but it's interesting to hear all right look we got a couple more questions here which I really think are very interesting Mike Farrow has asked can biochar be used to increase the carbon sequestration potential for forests who knows about biochar Paul is that for you unfortunately I don't really know enough about it to answer that question I've heard about it and I think there is on a small scale I think it's often used in the permaculture there's scale but I don't know about forestry situations for that so I can't answer that how about you Adam what do you know about biochar sorry I wish I could help Frank Frank in the chat knows a lot about biochar we'll refer people to the chat for that one thanks for the question Mike there's also the question I suppose of what could you do as a private citizen we've been talking really about planting at scale if you're a forester or if you're a land owner at scale Paul what about us as just plain old citizens what would you like to see being done at a kind of citizen level and maybe even just at a household level what message would you have for those people for us that's a big one where do you start I mean there's like to see all of our efforts from going plastic free and reducing our footprint on the planet in all sorts of ways but in terms of native forest I think we need to support initiatives that are going to encourage more native forest cover and that might be for instance opening a land mine to a native timber industry and supporting the purchase of native timber in order to support that as a land use option for land owners instead of importing a huge amount of timber though I think just finding ways that we can actually support the land uses that we need to have and the improvements and the enhancements use our consumer dollar and choice and every little individual's efforts will mount up to a significant cumulative effect how about you Adam what would you like to see happening at a kind of citizen level look I mean what comes to mind is personally we converted our front lawn into an area of native plantings we put a bird bath in and the life that has come through that area since doing that is just really quite amazing the silver eyes, the fantails the tuit, the tuit come and swim in the bird bath the keridu was feeding on the relatively young cabbage tree fruit that we're growing it's just amazing so I think that I'm sort of of a view that the right tree it's going to say in the right place but I'm going to the right tree can really make a difference there could be functional benefits just from having one fruiting or flowering tree for that time it's doing it there can be a real magnet for biodiversity so if you can just increase the habitat quality of your land in some way I think that's going to help and if we look at the national policy statement for biodiversity the draft one that's being talked about there's kind of requirements in there to get native cover above 10% in urban areas so that's going to require everyone to do their bit really it's not like the council can just wave a magic wand so I think it's heading in the right direction yeah it's an interesting perspective isn't it that maybe the best thing we could do is advocate and in our own backyards take native trees seriously native forests seriously it's been really disturbing to me just in my own neighbourhood just how many big trees are being cut down and in fact I think last week someone used the term shrub division which just for so disappointing in a leafy old Auckland suburb where I live just to see so many big trees being cut down so even at that level I think it counts doesn't it it does it all adds up even the exotic trees often they had structural diversity and so on it all comes together we live in a reasonably more mature kind of an older neighbourhood where there's quite a few trees people have planted all sorts of stuff over the years and we've had Ketiru nesting down the back and the two are amazing so yeah I'm just quite optimistic about if we can all put something back and just do our best I think it adds up Yeah look as a topic I think urban afforestation is such a great topic and we will be addressing some of that in next week's episode because we're looking at the many benefits of native forests outside of timber so the non-timber benefits and we've joined by the amazing Dr Jackie Amers who I think has been joining in the chat hasn't she Simon and Jackie has been a great contributor to this project also is in the film and also by Adam Walker and Hal Davies so we're really excited about the potential for urban contribution to our Nahiri obviously not at scale but perhaps doing some of those little pockets Paul and Adam that you talked about so we're out of time we have kept going because it's such an interesting topic so I'd just like to thank our audience for joining us again to talk about our Nahiri about our exciting future in this beautiful country but also Paul Quinlan and to Dr Adam Forbes for joining us tonight Thank you very much Great stuff, thank you guys and we will be here again next Tuesday same time talking about similar topic but fresh angle talking with those people I just talked about so have a good evening and let's get planting