Last week I ruminated on the effect that the Tongan volcanic eruption may have had on our weather and climate, and the record rainfall many of us have experienced.
Of course, there are many other influences. The unprecedented run of three years of La Niñas in a row certainly has had an effect.
After that huge El Niño in 1982/83 that blew the water out of the dams for eight months and a nasty drought, we concluded that El Niño bad, La Niña good.
That hasn’t turned out to be the case. Seems every third or so El Niño can be a very wet one and La Niñas can certainly bring droughts as in the two-in-a-row a couple of years ago.
This ongoing La Niña was expected to be waning by now but has made a comeback and is continuing to cause flooding events for Queensland and eastern New South Wales. And possibly here as well.
And then there are other weather events that can bring turmoil and devastation. Such as cyclones.
The first cyclone of the season to make an unwelcome visit to our shores was Cyclone Hale a couple of weeks ago.
By the time it reached us, it was labelled an ex-tropical cyclone, but it has caused a great deal of damage and suffering to many people.
A substantial amount of rainfall within a day or so has caused widespread flooding, particularly in Gisborne, Coromandel, some areas here in Hawke’s Bay, Taraua and Wairarapa.
But what has once again been highlighted is the destruction that has been wrought by the enormous amount of forestry slash that has been washed down the upper reaches of creeks and rivers onto other people’s properties, taking out fences, bridges, roading and homes.
For some, this is not the first time, and it is soul destroying after having cleaned up and rebuilt from previous events.
Pictures of the coastline once again littered with forestry slash and trees from other sources show that this can’t be allowed to continue happening.
Areas such as Hawke’s Bay, Tararua and Wairarapa are looking at their own future problems given the copious amounts of coastal plantings for production forestry and carbon.
At the time of writing there is another event developing; on top of Hale’s destruction it will cause ongoing difficulties. And of course, there will be more cyclones and weather events in the future.
This problem of slash entering waterways and destroying other people’s properties needs to be addressed now.
If those images of logs on Tairāwhiti beaches were instead in Auckland or Wellington harbours, one might expect a prompter response from the legislators and regulators.
Our farming business is only a small one, but we carry $2 million of public liability in case a fire I light ends up burning down a neighbour’s forest or I might cause some other negative impact to someone else.
Surely the forestry companies or whoever has been involved in these harvests that have contributed the slash must have their own public liability which can be called upon to remedy this damage and make sure it doesn’t happen again?
I see Forestry Minister Stuart Nash says an inquiry isn’t needed, rather forestry companies must sit down with key stakeholders and accept that there is an issue and that they need to work together to produce solutions.
He is taking some flak for this approach, but he may be right as these commissions of inquiry can take forever and may just end up kicking the can down the road. It is clear what is happening and why, so if everyone agrees on this then it would be better to quickly move to how to prevent this happening in the future. And how to help those affected.
This of course is of little help to those farmers and householders who are battling with the impacts of this recent event, but it needs to start now.
Forestry will always have a place in this part of the world but the scale that is developing due to the carbon influence is reducing biodiversity, increasing the risk of landslides and debris and of course the big worry, widespread fires.
Those of you affected by this recent event are in our thoughts and hopefully the assistance offered helps to some extent to get things back to some sort of order.
