Planting & Harvesting Estimates
New Planting and Restocking Estimates
The 2002 calendar year estimate of total planting is 61,700 hectares. This is made up of 22,100 hectares of new planting and 39,600 hectares of restocking. The new planting estimate is calculated from total seedling numbers sold by forest nurseries, and the restocking estimate is based on data collected from forest owners in the 2003 NEFD survey. Approximately 49,500 hectares of previously harvested forest remained unplanted awaiting restocking as at 1 April 2003. It is provisionally estimated that 14,900 hectares of new planting occurred during the 2003 calendar year.
Of the new planting captured directly in the 2003 NEFD survey, 49 percent occurred on unimproved pasture, 31 percent on improved pasture and 20 percent on land where scrub was previously the predominant land cover. Table 4 has the proportions of land cover types prior to new planting for the last ten years.
Table 4: Land Cover Prior to New Planting (Calendar years)
| Proportion of new land forest planting | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Previous land cover | 1993 | 1994 | 1995 | 1996 | 1997 (r) | 1998 | 1999 | 2000 | 2001 | 2002 |
| Improved pasture | 28% | 49% | 67% | 36% | 43% | 44% | 56% | 52% | 68% | 31% |
| Unimproved pasture | 56% | 35% | 22% | 50% | 46% | 47% | 30% | 31% | 9% | 49% |
| Scrub | 16% | 16% | 11% | 14% | 11% | 9% | 14% | 17% | 23% | 20% |
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The estimates of land cover prior to new planting are based solely on the new planting information collected in postal surveys: refer to Table 2. In some instances postal survey respondents who had undertaken new planting did not state the land cover prior to planting. While the sample size used to derive the proportions of land cover type prior to new planting is considered to be sufficiently large, the estimates are biased towards the practices of the larger forest owners who are more fully represented in the postal surveys.
For definitions of these land cover types refer to Appendix 1.
The 2003 NEFD survey estimated that the total volume harvested for the year ended 31 March 2003 was 23.0 million cubic metres. It is estimated that 22.2 million cubic metres came from clear felling 49,000 hectares of planted forest, and 0.8 million cubic metres from production thinning.
The area-weighted average clear fell age of radiata pine decreased from 27.4 years in the year ended 31 March 2002 to 27.3 years in the year ended 31 March 2003.
An independent estimate of roundwood removals from planted forest for the same period was 23.1 million cubic metres (Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, December 2003). This estimate is based on the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry's annual surveys of forest processing plants and export data from Statistics New Zealand. Conversion factors are used to indirectly estimate roundwood removals.
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