Dr. Matthew Crowe:

The Water Forum made 13 recommendations on forestry but I will go through a few of the key points. It is the highest status waters that have been particularly impacted by forestry. In the second river basin management plan the single greatest pressure was on the high status waters and they might be second in the updated characterisation work done by the EPA. The number of water bodies is not huge. The Water Forum recommends that for the 233 water bodies where forestry has been identified as a significant pressure, targeted measures would restore, protect or include it to indicate how the plan will reduce the forestry pressure from these water bodies.

I will come back to the point I was making earlier about the connectivity of different policies. If the climate policy will require an expansion of forestry while the water policy needs to address the fact that high status waters have been negatively impacted by legacy forestry and by forestry which is still there in some cases then those two policies have to meet and align with each other. You are back to this policy alignment issue. In 2027 we do not want to be in situation where forestry has expanded nationally to deal with the climate crisis and where the high status water issue has got worse. Those two things need to be taken together in tandem but you have two separate national plans. These include: the climate action plan which is dealing with the climate issues; the river basin management plan that is dealing with the water issues; and the new forestry strategy and Project Woodland that Dr. McGoff mentioned, which is looking at what the future of forestry will look like overall. For the credibility of all, forestry included, that legacy issue needs to be put to bed, which means there is a six-year window of opportunity to deal with that. If people are coming back here in six or seven years’ time talking about how it all went the committee wants them to be reporting that the legacy issue has been resolved. It should not be 233; it should be zero or a much smaller number of sites that are being impacted by forestry in the high status waters. Forestry should be a positive thing for water, not a negative thing.