Future Forests and Future Foresters – Forest Management in a Changing New Zealand Landscape

Abstract

New Zealand’s forest ecosystems are undergoing accelerated transformation, driven by changing climate, periodic disturbance events and biological invasions. Societal expectations of forests are also evolving. These forces and changing attitudes are challenging the current strongly entrenched dichotomies in New Zealand forest management, by both society and forestry practitioners. This paper contends that there is and will be a further increase in the diversity of forest types, and that many future forests in New Zealand will need to be more dynamic and multifunctional than in the past. Consequently, forestry practice will require a broader spectrum of management regimes and a rapid evolution of the professional forester’s role and skills to meet these changes. The New Zealand forestry profession must progress from the current main focus on exotic plantation timber production, to one that also better captures adaptive, integrative and systems-based management, capable of delivering multiple environmental, social and economic outcomes. Forests and forestry will take on many different forms in the future.