Earlier this year my boss asked me to identify training needs for this coming year, so I composed a list of essential training needs, in order of priority, with a note at the bottom "Please note that I haven't included a course in identification of aquatic plants in warm tropical waters since that does not seem entirely appropriate to my job at this stage. (big grin)" Unfortunately my boss concurred with that statement.

The other items were of a somewhat more serious nature, from a plant identification course, and training in computer packages to obtaining my tree climbing certificate. That last item is a serious request, the service delivery guys, who do most of the field work, gave me heaps when they found I had climbed a tree in search of mistletoe WITHOUT the proper training. It is all to do with meeting OSH (Occupational Safety and Health) requirements.

Anyway, to get back on track, I identified learning how to drive off-road in a 4 wheel drive vehicle as a training need. A lot of the places that I will be monitoring are off the beaten track, and quite a few can only be accessed by driving over private pasture or old disused roads. So, knowing how to handle a vehicle over that terrain, without doing myself or the equipment fatal injury, seemed useful training.

So on Thursday, a number of staff from different offices in the conservancy converged on New Plymouth to learn the proper way to hoon over rough ground in a 4 wheel drive ute. A nice bloke from Fleetwise told us that there were 3 parts to learning how to drive a 4 wheeled vehicle;

Well in a nutshell, I did alright, but was totally amazed by what the utes were capable of. Driving through axle deep potholes, traversing moderately steep slopes and cruising down quite steep hills. Some of the exercises we had to do backwards too. Like driving through the pot-holes and crossing a side slope on a set course. That was a lot harder because you lose your orientation more quickly going backwards. I'm much better using the right hand rearview mirror than the left hand one, and keep in mind that the ute is a long and bulky vehicle to maneuver backwards, especially if you are trying to be good and only use the mirrors.

One of the scariest exercises was driving up a steep hill until the ute lost traction and then slamming the thing in reverse and coming down off the hill using engine braking, all without touching the foot or hand brakes. Other tests were easy such as starting on an uphill slope from standstill - just listen to the engine noise and engage gear at the appropriate moment.

I was really lucky, we had an odd number of people so I got to drive the instructors ute all day, by myself, the others were in pairs and had to swap drivers all the time. That means that I got twice the practice for a number of the exercises. Don't know why the instructor let me drive the truck. Didn't think I looked that trustworthy and it certainly wasn't my level of experience.

I really enjoyed the day and learning about what the utes could do. At the end of the day I got a ride back to New Plymouth area office where I met up with GL. He'd been talking with the New Plymouth and Stratford staff about problem weeds in the area and had an appointment with a farmer about a logging consent the next day. GL asked me to go along because I have a bit more experience with native trees and because advising on resource consents is also supposed to be part of my job.

I'll state this right here and now, I'm opposed to any logging of native forests. That attitude has been drummed into me throughout my university career and I personally feel that we humans have chopped down too many forests around the world as is. I'm not necessarily opposed to logging of native timber, especially if native trees have been specifically planted for that purpose. But logging of native forests goes against the grain.

However, occasionally permits are granted to log native forests if this can be done in a sustainable manner. Of course sustainable is open to debate. Are we talking about sustaining the ability of the forest to produce more timber, or the ability of the forest to maintain the ecosystem and all its components? They are quite different.

For the first you just need to make sure that enough seed trees remain to repopulate the area and that you leave the area alone for duration of the regeneration. Mind you even that can cause problems, most of the rimu that is of sufficient diameter to log is several hundred years old, so logging rotations become very long and sustainability very suspect.

Trying to maintain the forest as a sustainable ecosystem is quite a different story, then you have to start thinking in terms of how much food and nesting sites you are removing from the system, how much nutrient becomes unavailable to the insects and decomposers in the forest. Many NZ forested areas are just like tropical forest. Most of the nutrients are bound up in the trees, plants and topsoil of the forest. Removing the trees (in this case by helicopter logging, and in the tropics by fire) removes the nutrients permanently from the system and it can take a long time to replace them. In the tropics commercial farms and pastures start failing after about 3 years of heavy cropping on burned forest areas, because most of the nutrients went up in smoke while burning the trees.

Then there are the additional problems of soil erosion, because the valuable topsoil is more exposed to wind, sun and rain before the surrounding trees close the hole left in the canopy. In the tropics this is even worse, because all the trees are felled or burned and there are no roots left to bind the soil to the hills. This causes huge slips and runoff, which block and pollutes surrounding water ways. Heli-logging has a relatively small impact on the forest because you don't need to construct roads to pull the cut logs out. However, felling the logs still crushes quite a significant portion of the surrounding vegetation.

Enough of my grousing. The farmer we saw was a nice chap and very reasonable. He'd been working through the permit and then resource consent process for more than a year and was somewhat miffed by the duration of the process. It was resolved relatively easily by some face to face negotiation. He took us for a tiki-tour up the hill to look at the forest that was heli-logged for rimu some years ago. I would have loved to get to one of the clearing left after the logging to see what seedlings were coming up, especially to check if rimu had managed to establish a foothold in the space left by the logged rimu. However, the steep (read sheer cliffs) nature of the area precluded that.

I can understand the farmers point of view too. Farming is hard work these days and not all that profitable, so any additional income, relatively easily obtained, is welcome. This particular farm is surrounded by some huge state forests and conservation estates. So his bit of logging is relatively insignificant in the scheme of things for that area. But New Zealand only has about 7-10% of its native forests left, so on a nationwide scale his bit of forest does take on significance.

All I can say for the moment is that I hope not too many logging consents come my way, it really tears me up because I can see all sides of the argument. Including the one that says if you want that particular type of timber then plant it and harvest it as a proper crop. To me that is the way it should go, even though the rotation is longer than the 20-25 years for Pinus radiata.