Oral Submission Presentation by Blake Foster - New Zealand ...

We have sold the carbon credits through a broker/consultant. For each of the commitment
periods you get an allotment of carbon credits. You don’t have to sell them; you can keep them.
But for us selling them pays for the control work on the rest of the area.
The core area doesn’t have a lot of commercial value, and it has never had any silviculture. It’s
quite a long way from the market unless there is a major market change.
We have been looking at making wood pellets and firewood out of them; we’re just investigating
that at the moment.
We are trying to use the funds responsibly, not just put the wildings in the ETS, take the money
and run.
While we are using the funds to eradicate the trees, we feared others might not use the funds
from the sale of carbon credits for eradicating wildings.
Our central aim is to get rid of the contorta species.
We’ve had huge success in the last year and the ETS has provided a way for it to happen.
I would say we are looking at control for another 15 years at least.
Wilding forests are called Tree Weed Forests under the ETS.
Blake has lobbied MAF and ECAN to give an alternative view on how to get funding from the
ETS to deal with the problem of wilding trees. This view of using the ETS funds to deal with
clearing wildings can be seen as partnering with ECAN. And the submission was received
favourably with ECAN amending one of its rules. The theme of the submissions were to:
• use a certain percentage of the income derived from ETS Carbon Credits to be put back into
controlling the spread ;
• set the area of the tree weed forest to be the area placed in the ETS and not allow it to expand
beyond this area ;
• use income from ETS, plant buffer zones of non spreading species to contain seed spread ;
• replant the existing forest into a non spreading species over time and enter this new forest of
non spreading trees into the ETS to further fund the programme ;
• use the money from ETS to fund the long term eradication of wildings outside the containment
area;