What Hugh Wilson thinks about using pine trees to tackle climate change

During a visit to Akaroa last weekend, we met the botanist Hugh Wilson, star of the film Fools and Dreamers, ​who is restoring much of the Akaroa peninsula to native bush. What a fabulous man.

Here’s what Hugh thinks about using pine trees to tackle climate change:

“Without even a nod to complex, fully functioning ecosystems, to ecological integrity, to aesthetics, to sense of place, to history, to comprehension of how the living world works, to wise land use, to rural communities, even to common sense, New Zealand seems hellbent on planting Pinus Radiata, an exotic conifer, for carbon sequestration.

Is this the best Homo sapiens can do, attempting to solve one monstrous blunder with another? Slower to get going, native forest regeneration eventually sequesters more carbon and for much longer than monocultures of pines. It also brings a thousand other benefits which pine plantings don’t touch.”

Fools and Dreamers

Check out the film about Hugh and Hinewai Reserve: