Emyr Parker is one of two candidates selected for the Young Professional Foresters’ Exchange Programme (2024-2025) and is spending three months in New Zealand working for Juken NZ, Emyr has shared an update on his experience so far, one month into the exchange programme.
I have always been intrigued by how forestry and land management can be different across the world while still believing in the efficacy of our practices in the UK. My aim for this programme was to gain first-hand experience of different approaches to policy, operations, and planning further afield, and to apply the best practice elements to my own work. I believe we can gain valuable insights by examining successful practices and cultures globally to enhance sustainability and diversity in forestry. My first choice for this programme was always going to be New Zealand. A country so far away, yet with so many similarities to Wales, just on a vastly different scale. With a journey of 38 hours from door to door (Bangor, Gwynedd to Masterton, Wairarapa), it began to sink in what a world away I was from home. I soon settled in, however, with the six flatmates in the accommodation, each with a connection to forestry, and with plenty of local knowledge for me to fill my boots.
My official title while working for Juken New Zealand (JNL) is a Production & Engineering Manager in the Wairarapa region (South North Island) – approximately an hour and a half from the beautiful capital city of Wellington. Juken is a vertically integrated corporate forestry company, managing approximately 40,000 hectares of plantation forestry in the Wairarapa, as well as blocks further up the North East coast (office based in Gisbourne). The estate within the Wairarapa region (named Ngaumu) was entirely, bar one small block, owned by the crown, and was under the management of the old Forest Service, but has since been handed back to the Iwi (the Māori tribes within the region). The land is being leased to Juken for the purpose of production forestry, with the leasehold agreements to be confirmed. The Iwi influence can be so important to operations in ways I could not have imagined. I even heard stories of harvesting crews having really strange and unsettling issues with machinery breaking down, and ropes snapping suddenly when working near Iwi burial sites until they received a blessing from the regional Iwi, after which, the operation could not have gone more smoothly.
There is a sawmill in Masterton, which the forestry element supplies with high grade pruned logs. Juken is also supplying a local domestic market with high spec unpruned logs, as well as sending a large percentage of their loads to the docks where they are exported to Japan. The dominant, and practically only species of timber in question is Radiata pine (Pinus radiata) with little or no intention of introducing alternative species. In fact, much of the felled Douglas fir in recent years has been replaced with radiata in its stead.
I have found working for the company entirely different from my experience at Tilhill, with the client being ‘themselves’, aka – their parent company WoodOne ltd, a Japanese major international housing materials and componentry company, which has invested over $NZ700 million into Juken and NZ, which of course means that there is a heavy focus and emphasis on timber production. My new colleagues are extremely hard-working individuals with completely different cultures and attitudes to that which I have experienced at home in UK forestry. My day-to day role includes a good variety of exposure to both harvesting and silviculture, as well as anything else I can pick up along the way. I am learning so much about high lead cable harvesting systems with timber haulers and swing yarders, as well as the pruning and thinning operations that are carried out during the pines’ 30-year rotation to get the maximum amount of clearwood for the Juken Mill.
In addition, I have been exposed to the hunting culture, and seen the incredible impact that non-native mammals – untroubled by predators can have. On one setting, I counted over 100 goats within the space of an hour, as well as around five pigs, and ten deer, both Fallow and Red. These pests not only effect the commercial forestry, but create an imbalance in the landscape, browsing native forests and destroying every layer of canopy from the ground up. Wild pigs churn up the ground and the flora and fauna layer, goats browse a little higher, deer higher still, and above that, the possums destroy the rest. Not to mention the impact that the brush tailed possums have on the native protected bird population, preying on their eggs, chicks and sometimes even the adults themselves.
I have now travelled to the Gisbourne office where I will get to see the East Coast Forest estate. I am staying in a cottage on a large manor house estate named the Acton estate, which is luxury. I am very much looking forward to seeing what the rest of New Zealand has to offer, with weekend trips planned to Auckland, Rotorua, and Taupō.
– Emyr Parker
Stay tuned for more updates!
The Young Professional Foresters’ Exchange Programme is an exciting initiative administered by the Canadian Institute of Forestry/Institut forestier du Canada (CIF-IFC), the Institute of Chartered Foresters (United Kingdom), the New Zealand Institute of Forestry, and Forestry Australia.
