When Cyclone Gabrielle tore through New Zealand’s Tairāwhiti region in 2023, it left behind more than silt and floodwaters.

Rivers were choked with forestry debris, beaches littered with logs, and homes, bridges and farmland buried under tonnes of forestry slash swept down from hillsides.

The scale of the impacts – to infrastructure, livelihoods, ecosystems and to Māori kaitiakitanga (guardianship), and the loss of life – triggered widespread public outrage, with a ministerial inquiry launched soon after.

This led to new rules requiring foresters to better manage harvest debris on steep slopes and reduce the risk of slash being swept away in floods.

Now, the rulebook is being rewritten again, with the government proposing changes to the National Environmental Standards for Commercial Forestry (NES-CF).

This would allow foresters to leave more slash in areas considered lower risk.

Detailed government guidance on managing slash risk is still being developed, in a process which will limit opportunity for public input. At the same time, the reforms curtail councils’ ability to impose tougher restrictions to address the risks of slash.

This all points to an obvious question: have Gabrielle’s lessons for forestry management been learned? Our newly published research suggests that, even before these latest policy changes, they have not.

Little evidence of clear-cut limits

When the ministerial inquiry’s........

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