Ewen-Street Ian: General Debates 
Ewen-Street Ian: General Debates 
[Volume:616;Page:11935] 
IAN EWEN-STREET (Green) 
: 
 A headline in yesterday’s  
Dominion Post 
 said: “Get used to wild weather”. The article quoted climate expert Jim Salinger as saying that we should expect more extreme weather events similar to last month’s severe storms. The effect of those storms has been catastrophic for many lower North Island farmers. While I applaud the Government’s initiative in helping farmers recover from the immediate trauma of the floods I say that it is also time to look at preventing future floods of that magnitude. So what can we do to mitigate the effects of large future storms that apparently will come? 
The recent floods had two main destructive elements as I see it. The first was the floodwaters themselves which swept away livestock houses cars and fences. The second effect was the silt burden that was deposited on top of the pasture. What I propose is a partial solution to both of those problems and that is to look at sustainable land-use patterns. What farmers have previously thought of as being sustainable land-use may no longer be sustainable because of the changeable weather patterns. One of the lessons we learnt from Cyclone Bola for instance was that mature indigenous forests and pine plantations of less than 8 years old reduced landslips to less than one-sixteenth of those occurring on pasture. 
In the lower North Island 60 percent of the Manawatu-Wanganui Regional Council area is hill country and 50 percent of the region is susceptible to erosion. Some 400000 hectares are susceptible to severe erosion. Although land clearance is now rarely done only 10 percent of the Manawatu region is native bush and 9 percent is plantation forestry. Clearly what the Government and regional councils must do is encourage the planting of trees particularly in the headwaters of streams and along riparian margins. In fact it should be within the powers of the Manawatu-Wanganui Regional Council to require the reforestation of those areas. 
If farmers are concerned about the cost of such an activity it is worth their bearing in mind that in 1992 when there were also big floods repairing and plantings at that time reduced the cost of repairs to fences and tracks from $76 a hectare to just $28 a hectare. The main point of reforestation is to prevent erosion and hence sedimentation over pastures during floods. But another value of reforestation especially in the headwaters of streams is to physically slow down the speed of runoff during rainfall. This has the effect of helping rainwater seep gradually into the soil and lessen the amount of water running off into streams. Obviously if the soil is already saturated all excess water will run off anyway and it will have a less significant impact on major floods but it should have a mitigating effect on the frequency of minor flooding events. 
A large number of trees and shrubs are suitable for planting in headwaters and riparian margins. I will not mention all of them but a lot of native species eucalypts wattles and quite a number of exotic softwoods and hardwoods are suitable. I encourage the Government to fund the reforestation of critical areas of the lower North Island. This can be done by funding individual farmers to change their land-use patterns. The Government needs to support these farmers and foresters in the same way it is doing now for pastoral farmers—in other words by paying 90 percent of the cost of re-establishment. At the moment they are doing it for pasture; I am suggesting they do so for reforestation. 
I agree that this is not an urgent priority right now. That certainly lies with getting farmers back up to speed in terms of their productivity. They need to repair fences get their livestock producing again repair their houses and so on. But I do think that now is the time for the Government to start putting in place the insurance policy of selective reforestation. It will not solve the entire problem but it will mitigate the effects of future storms and as I said at the beginning of my speech the weather experts say that we have to get used to wild weather.