landscape matrix

The desire for ecosystem restoration and native forest expansion is growing internationally. Transitional forestry, where an exotic plantation forest is transitioned to a native forest, is a potential method of native forest restoration and carbon sequestration that is gaining interest in Aotearoa New Zealand. However, it is currently unknown whether this approach can produce a permanent native forest ecosystem and how representative of remnant native forest it could be.

The contribution of exotic plantation forests to the conservation of New Zealand’s flora and fauna is a somewhat controversial issue, partly because the establishment of some plantations involved the conversion of indigenous vegetation. Such conversion no longer occurs within the professional forest industry and there is a growing appreciation of the contribution of ‘production’ land, including plantation forests, to the protection of New Zealand’s unique indigenous biodiversity.