POPLAR SILVOPASTORALISM - OVERTIME FOR A NEW APPROACH

Added 12 months ago

By Ewan McGregor, Waipawa

POPLAR SILVOPASTORALISM - OVERTIME FOR A NEW APPROACH

The old Patangata County Council, which was absorbed in two stages into the present Central Hawke’s Bay District Council, its area now covering the coastal portion of the Council, decided in the mid-1960s to plant radiata pines along the rural roadsides. Some were placed over areas of suspect stability, but most were not. They thereafter were subject to, for want of a better term, management. Some had belated and unprofessional silviculture, some were topped at an early stage to produce multiple leaders, while others had large branches removed only after the objection of stock trucks operators. (The branches, for reasons that remain obscurer, were then being put through a shredder, a costly process.)