Source: Radio New Zealand
Flood damage in Punaruku, Te Araroa on the East Coast. Supplied
The slash debate heats up – again – in Gisborne as forestry operators urge the government to remove their legal accountability for the devastating discharge.
When the rain stops in Tairāwhiti, the damage doesn’t.
Because when the rain hits hard, it floods wood. Lots of it.
On beaches, whole trees lie tangled like matchsticks.
Rivers choke with debris; bridges are smashed; roads are closed; and communities are left staring at a costly and heartbreaking mess.
The debris has a name, slash. It is the branches, logs and waste left behind after commercial forestry harvesting.
And now, it’s been revealed the industry at the centre of it is asking the government to remove legal accountability when slash escapes.
Under current law, forestry companies can be held responsible if slash causes environmental harm or property damage.
And in recent years, slash in the area has caused widespread destruction of billions of dollars of public and private infrastructure.
A house in the aftermath of Cyclones Gabrielle Alexa Cook / RNZ
So, three years after the devastation left by cyclones Hale and Gabrielle, The Detail speaks to Dr Mark Bloomberg, an adjunct senior fellow at the School of Forestry at Canterbury University, about forestry, slash and who should be accountable.
“The [forestry] companies came in and let’s say, I don’t like to use the word good faith, but in good faith, they went in, and where they hadn’t complied, they took their licks and set about to try and be compliant with the consents they were operating under and contributing to clean up,” Bloomberg said.
“But then the bills kept coming, and the council came back and said, ‘yeah, well, apart from any liability in terms of complying with consents, there’s a broader liability under the RMA [Resource Management Act] because you guys did the logging, you are it’.
“I think that issue has got to be resolved.
“In the short term, we have a problem arising from harvesting practices over the last decade.
“But in the medium term, we have got to solve the problem by stopping the discharges.”
He said slash had long been a feature of forestry landscapes, but in steep, erosion-prone regions like Gisborne, it had become a recurring hazard.
Slip clearing on the East Coast’s SH35 between Tikitiki and Te Araroa, 25 January 2026. Supplied/ NZTA
Heavy rain mobilises the debris, sending it downstream with devastating force. Cyclone Gabrielle made the consequences impossible to ignore.
“This is probably where I am a little bit tough on the forestry industry,” Bloomberg said.
“I think these large, clear fells – they should have seen it coming. It was pretty foreseeable, actually, that large volumes of sediment and the accompanying slash would be triggered in the next storm.”
He recommended replacing large-scale clear-felling with “smaller coupes” (a coupe refers to an area of felled trees, resulting from a forestry harvesting operation).
“It’s the scale of the clear-felling that caused a lot of the damage in terms of slash and sediment. We have got to get those coupes down to small sizes. This is, in fact, what happens overseas. If you look at difficult erodible land being harvested in Europe, they’ll be down to coupe sizes, sometimes one to two hectares.
“It’s recognised that big commercial clear felling, on this kind of land, is just not a goer. If you want one take-home message, then these big clear fells have to stop, and they have got to stop pronto.”
A slip blocking a road near Te Araroa. Te Araroa Civil Defence / supplied
In recent years, slash has blocked access to beaches, affected business and tourism, destroyed infrastructure and threatened safety. In some cases, debris contributed to loss of life.
And it has returned in recent days, albeit on a much smaller scale, following heavy rain in Tairāwhiti and surrounding areas.
“Unless we grasp the nettle and sort this one out, any of the outcomes [environmentally and economically] will not be good. I’d be pretty confident there.”
At its heart, the slash debate is not about whether storms will come – they will.
But whether, next time, the responsibility is owned or quietly slips away.
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
