Day 058 - 30 Nov 94 - Page 17
1
2 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Can you explain that word to me?
3 A. Nothofagus is a species of tree that is prevalent in
4 New Zealand.
5
6 Q. Is it a softwood or hardwood tree?
7 A. That is a hardwood, but you have many monocultures or
8 close to monocultures right through the whole of
9 Scandinavia because most of their forests are pine until
10 you have a mixture of spruce, and then in other areas most
11 of the forest is spruce until you have a mixture of pine,
12 but they are very nearly a monoculture. That happens
13 absolutely naturally.
14
15 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Someone has had an awful lot of fun giving
16 names to pests when it comes to forestry, have they not?
17
18 MR. MORRIS: Is not a fact that aspen, alder, birch and willow
19 are found in the so-called monocultures in Scandinavia.
20 A. In small quantities, yes.
21
22 Q. Within the forest.
23 A. Within forest, yes.
24
25 Q. Because they would be important as regards the contribution
26 to the diversity in the ecosystem, would they not?
27 A. Yes.
28
29 Q. Because of the flora and fauna that may be associated with
30 that?
31 A. Very much so, and that is very much taken into account.
32
33 Q. So they are not strictly monocultures in terms of trees?
34 A. I think it would be fair to say that most forests
35 naturally regenerated, and that is certainly what happens
36 within the Scandinavia regions of Sweden and Finland, in
37 particular, will have a mixture of other species in it and
38 they encourage this.
39
40 Q. We are talking about natural regeneration as opposed to
41 plantation monocultures. I will not ask you about the
42 nothofagus of New Zealand because I am not sure how
43 relevant it is anyway. But also where you have a natural
44 forest, the age range from seed to over mature and, in
45 fact, rotting trees will be a great mixture throughout that
46 natural forest, will it not?
47 A. Very much so.
48
49 Q. Which does not occur in the plantations which are carefully
50 monitored and organised?
51 A. Yes, where the forest is entirely a plantation forest,
52 apart from the trees that have been left as part of the
53 silvicultural regime, and that is increasingly the case
54 even in plantation forests, they are likely to be of a
55 single age which is one of the reasons why the areas that
56 are cleared nowadays are very much smaller in order that a
57 total area of forest land will have a mixture of age and
58 also of species.
59
60 Q. But in any one area the trees would be of the same age
