Wilding Tree Removal Jeopardized by “Brainless” Conditions

An exemption to the Emissions Trading Scheme that would have allowed wilding conifer trees to be removed from Mid Dome has been tagged with unworkable conditions, the Chair of the Mid Dome Wilding Trees Charitable Trust said today.

Cr Ali Timms said that the conditions were impossible for the Trust to comply with and the deadline to apply for an exemption was too short. As a consequence, the proposed aerial spraying trial to control the trees could not proceed this summer.

Fellow Environment Southland Councillors were shocked to learn that the hard-won exemption from the Emissions Trading Scheme legislation could be frustrated by conditions that required a 100 percent kill rate of the designated trees by December 2012.

“The exemption process for the removal of tree weeds is totally unworkable and impractical,” Cr Timms told Environment Southland’s Regional Services Committee. “The Trust was hoping to initiate large scale spray trials on the front face of Mid Dome this year. We were developing the spray plan, but it’s all gone out the window.”

The spray trials would have gauged the effectiveness of systemic herbicides in killing pinus contorta trees, but the trial could not meet the criteria for the exemption, which included a total kill of all tree weeds within the designated area, and prohibited more trees from being killed than had been exempted.

“The penalties could be up to $25,000 per hectare so if we kill more or less trees we are penalized, and if we don’t totally kill some of the trees at all, we’ll be penalized for that too,” Cr Timms said.

Given that Parliament included the exemption from the Emissions Trading Scheme legislation specifically to enable the wilding trees to be removed from Mid Dome and other similar areas, it defied belief that policy makers could have created obstacles that would make it unworkable.

“This jeopardizes our whole wilding eradication programme,” she concluded.

Council Chair Stuart Collie described the conditions as “brainless” and said they must have been devised by someone who had never seen a wilding tree. “I don’t know of any chemical from any source in any application that would give you a 100 percent kill.”

Cr Nicol Horrell described the requirements as “a total nonsense” and said Environment Southland and the Mid Dome Wilding Trees Charitable Trust had to push for the conditions to be rewritten.

Councillors voted unanimously to support the Trust’s efforts to have the conditions amended.

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