Most of my woodworking projects and products are now sourced from recycled timber and what isn’t comes from sustainable sources – primarily from NZ plantation pine forests. Over time, this will also shift to using more NZ Beech.

Our own 100 Hectares( 250 acres )  of forest, of which we are now the stewards, is 22 Hectares (50 acres ) of plantation pine which we intend to harvest using a select harvest method (unheard of here in New Zealand for plantation pine). We plan on milling the timber ourselves, drying in a solar kiln and selling locally or turning into wood products and replacing the plantation with natives as areas open up – rather than the usual clear-cutting and restocking with pine.

The remaining 78 Hectares ( ~200 acres ) is all native with the primary species being native NZ beeches. It falls under legislation which requires us to produce a sustainable forest plan if we want to extract anything. This we did and we now have a permit ( technically a Sustainable Forest Management Permit)  to cut 500 cu.m ( about 225,000 bd ft) over a 10 year period. Before we do we must submit a logging plan for the year. Even downed trees count! In order to get the permit we have to prove that the permit amount is less than 10% of the total growth of the forest – ours is well below that. We plan to use a coupe method which has proven to best simulate the natural regeneration of the beech forest ( the explanation of this method and why it is the best is another topic in itself).

My partner literally hugs the trees whenever we go in to the forest. Some of these trees are over 600 years old – they demand a great deal of respect!

As a woodworker, I see my role as giving our trees a life beyond the one they have seen for the last 600 years without endangering their offspring. As a forester, I see my job as preserving the forest for the benefit of the entire community – our forests are natural sponges in a very wet area. Cut the trees and the floods would wash away everything and our streams and rivers would stop running during dry spells. Cut the trees and birds disappear and biodiversity stops.

As a tree hugger though, I do have one not so nice job – which is to control the non-native animal species which ravage the native forests. These are primarily possums, deer, pigs, rats, stoats, weasels and ferrel cats and goats. Unfortunately these were introduced for various stupid reasons. I have to kill to protect the trees. This land knew no mammals until humans introduced them. In New Zealand birds take on every role that mammals do elsewhere. Take the birds away and the trees stop reproducing. It’s amazing.

So, yes, tree-hugger environmentalists can be woodworkers and  trappers and hunters too and it’s not at all inconsistent.