MY BEAUTIFUL COUNTRY NEW ZEALAND!
ELSIE HAGLEYElsie Hagley Urenui
CARBON FARMING IN NEW ZEALAND!
erosion-prone hill country
Recently reading a farming magazine I came across a story about Carbon farming.
It said the Emissions Trading Scheme will have "no impact on reducing emissions in New Zealand in the short term" but there are ways for farmers to capitalise on it.
It was said that 10% of the average farm devoted to carbon sequestration could offset a property's greenhouse gas emissions "for the next 50 years". They are saying that "they are not talking about destroying farming - replacing it with forestry.
They are talking about integrating carbon sequestration.. into farms."
Carbon forestry becomes just another form of land use.
 While there's no way that carbon forestry will complete with a dairy or cropping farm, for instance, it might be the most profitable option for erosion-prone hill country. So why farm it when the hills sliding down into a gully.
Put it in trees!
 As they are saying the taxpayer is covering all of a farmers farm emission-liability until 2015 when the coverage reduces by just over 1.3% a year from a starting point of 90%.
 So does not the farmer pay any tax?
Well this is a strange one, I will continue on writing down what they are saying, as a lot of people reading this, either will not know it, or could do with a reminder on the Carbon Emission Trading Scheme, or otherwise do not receive farming magazines, and have no idea of what I am reading here.
Under this design, farmers can prepare to make money from carbon forestry "for some time" before they have to surrender credits to cover their own greenhouse gas liability. Again all this would be available without surrending the farm to wood or even abandoning timber harvesting. They say woodlots can be designed to include timber production " in the background" as a contingency, say, for carbon markets being pole-axed by a global solution to carbon emissions. Or it may be that you may simply change your mind. If you want to exit the whole thing, then you have got a residual forest crop to manage as well. So you can cover it in a whole range of ways.
 Farmers registering credit under the ETS have the added flexibilty of being able to opt out of the scheme at any time. "You can also harvest the forest at any time... although you've got obligations for any credits that you have been assigned and sold. You have replace those."

Here is what will happen if you commit yourselve to Permanent Forest Sink Initiative [PFSI] they require you to be committed from the outset - exiting only after 50 years
. If you "stay in the game" you're not allowed to clear-fell harvest for 99 years, although a level of sustainable harverting is allowed - and again there are obligations to replace any carbon credits that are sold.
But landowners who start off in the ETS can switch over to the PFSI. Irrespective of the choice, it needs to be treated as a long-term invesment.
 If you are dealing with native regeneration then that sequestration will continue to be positive for hundreds of years, the end game may max at 400 or 500 years out.
 Less dramatically, radiata will "still be making money, paying the rates" with a positive sequestration at 100 years while redwood, douglas firs and some eucalypt species will be doing the business after 200 years.
 This article is very interesting, I hope you learn something from it, as I have done.

Garden of great joy and pleasure, where the birds sing all day, at night the kiwi's call out!
That is something special, I have living in the ranges of Okoki, 20 kms from Urenui Taranaki NZ.
I am going to do a special Report taken from a newsletter June 2009 on East Taranaki Environment Trust.
KIWI'S
They have just finished the kiwi call survey, both for Purangi block and the Pouiatoa block.
The Purangi block has shown quite a change since trapping started in 2005 (That is stoat boxes set and checked regulary).
They have continued to use the same six listening sites to ensure consistency , each survey site is monitored for three nights for a two hour period, the first listening night at Purangi block was rather windy which resulted in poor results for that night.
At several of the sites a number of other kiwi calls were heard but the listeners could not get a fix on them, so they were not included, below are the best 2009 single night call and the 2007 best individual night calls in brackets.
Site 1  - 20 calls (9 calls)
Site 2 - 17 calls(13 calls)
Site 3 - 17 calls (5 calls)
Site 4 - 16 calls (4 calls)
Site 5 - 5 calls (4 calls)   
Site 6 - 9 calls (6 calls)  
This is the bit I like - at site 2   after the listening period, the listener played a kiwi call and a female replied, then she charged out of the scrub and bounced off his leg and wandered over to some crown fern and stopped, how exiting for the listener.
Wetlands are Important Worldwide
Hagley Wetlands Piko Road Urenui!
This wetland is part of my garden which is beautiful especially when the waterlilies are in flower. There where goldfish in it until the bad floods at Okoki on 2nd of May 2005. Now there is only eels, frogs and many types of insects busy buzzy around the plants and birds singing in the tree tops.

WETLANDS ALSO PROVIDE LANDSCAPE AND SCENERY VALUES!
Some wetlands are just temporarily wet, drying out between rainfalls others are permanently wet. The storage capacity of a wetland will detain floodwater with the peak flow and water levels downstream, evening out as it is slowly released from the wetlands area. Plus the slow release of water from a wetlands maintains stream flow and ground water levels during summer or periods of drought. Plants such as sphagnum moss can obsorb up to 26 times their own weight of water, peat can absorb up to 10 times it's weight, which during dry periods the water is then slowly released.
Wetlands are nature's sponge during storm events.
Our wetlands or pond never dries even when we have the driest of summers as the month of
February 2007 .25mm of rain.
This wetlands is the off-flow from the ranges around our farm a great place for breeding of ducks.
One day we recieved a very nice surprise to see ducklings following their mother out off the flaxes and swimming across the pond waddling throught the paddock and into the Urenui river.
Shags, Kingfishers and Pukeko's can be a a problem especially when you have young fish.
There is nothing more beautiful than the cool wetlands area with the ranges around you and the birds singing high in the tree tops, Magpie's calling out as though they are talking to you, until a hawk fly high in the air, then it all changes, as those noisey magpie's give chase to one of those precious Hawks that not many give credit to, as a prey bird they keep the forest clean of all those dead animals or predators that destroy the young birds and egg's with the threat of extinction of flightless birds like our Kiwi's. Wetlands have beautiful scenery and provide the landscape with essential growth to help keep
New Zealand clean and green.
Improving Water Quality in Taranaki.
New Culvert Piko Road Urenui!
Urenui River - putting a new culvert in on Piko Road Okoki!

ONE WAY OF KEEPING NEW ZEALAND CLEAN AND GREEN!
Taranaki has more than 300 mountain-fed rivers, but the land that feeds these rivers has become more and more dedicated to dairy farming, when it rains the run-off from these paddocks into the region's waterway's becomes more of an issue.
In an attempt to improve the water quality in 1994 the Taranaki Regional Council introduced its
Riparian Management Programme.
The term Riparian refers to anything existing on a riverbank and the Riparian Planting Scheme aims to create a barrier between the open paddocks populated by grazing livestock and the river itself. Generally this is a area of between four to six metres, which is fenced off and planted with a variety of plants. A grass buffer inside the margin filters run off from pastureland before it enters streams, thereby reducing the growth of river-choking algae.The Riparian Planting Scheme success relies very heavily on co-operation with farmers and other landowners and since the scheme's started, it has gone from strenght to strenght, to a point that there are now over 300 plans completed by the Taranaki Regional Councils  dedicated Officers every year.
Around 50% of Taranaki Dairy Farmers have so far adopted the scheme for their farms.
Under the Clean Streams Accord's Regional Action Plan for Taranaki, ninety percent of these plans must be implemented by 2015.
 KIWI - IS A  SYMBOLIC IMPORTANCE IN NEW ZEALAND
The Kiwi is New Zealands National Emblem!
Three Species of Kiwi  - Great Spotted Kiwi, Little Spotted Kiwi, Plus the Brown Kiwi.

HABITS BROWN KIWI
The Brown Kiwi survives in the South Island, Steward Island and Parts of the North Island of New Zealand.A flightless bird of the kiwi's size-roughly as big as a hen,is easy prey for flesh-eating mammals.At first glance,it barely resembles a bird. It has no visible wings or tail, but short, thick legs and coarse plumage that looks more like hair than feathers. The kiwi's eyesight is so good that the bird can run swifty through dense vegetable in pitch darkness.
It still survives in good numbers in some areas,especially in reserves.
The Kiwis home is mainly forest and scrub where it relies on it's strong legs to scurry through thick under-growth
The Brown Kiwi's
Length: 50cm,
Height: 35cm,
Weight: 2.2kgs
Females are about 20% heavier than the male.They generally lives in pairs.
Using calls to keep in contact within the dense forest.The Pair occupy and defend a territory vigorously Chasing away any intruding kiwis.                                                                         Brown Kiwi
In the thick Bush where I live in Okoki Urenui Taranaki,
Iam a very Lucky Person  to hear them calling out at dusk, one of the pleasure of living in My Beautiful Country,
Beside the Bush Clad Urenui River.The Brown kiwi spends the day fast asleep.
Concealed spot among undergrowth or logs.Unable to fly, it skulks about at night, probing and scraping for it's food on the leafy forest floor.

BREEDING
 Laying Season: July-February,the Female Kiwi produces one or two huge eggs, that may equal more than a sixth of it's body weight.
Each egg contains a large,nutritous yolk that lasts not only for the long incubation but also provides the hatching chick with a packet of food in the form of a yolk sac.
The female lays her eggs in a hole among dense vegetation, between tree roots or in a hollow log. The male kiwi her mate incubates them for 11 weeks - The longest known incubation period of any bird.
By the time it hatches out ,each chick is open-eyed and fully feathered.Within a week it is leaving the nest alone,attempting to get food for its self.
The effort of egg production for the female and incubation for the male cause the kiwi to lose about a fifth of their body weight during each breeding attempt.

FOOD AND FEEDING
At the tip of the kiwi's bill are a pair of unusually sensitive nostrils. The kiwi  uses these to find food, as well as to detect and locate fellow birds.It also has good hearing and a fine sense of touch,both of which helps it to secure food during it's night-time forages.
It's mixed diet includes insects, worms, berries and fruit,but it also catches the occasional small repite or amphibian. It exposes food by scratching through the leaf  litter with it's powerful claws, or by probing it's bill deep into the soil to smell and feel for invertebrate prey.

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Compiled by Elsie Hagley
Urenui, New Zealand.
Email:elsie.hagley@gmail.com