Strategies to promote landowners and groups in preserving the existing and establishing new native forests include conservation covenants, payments for ecosystem services and incentive programmes. However, designing and implementing incentive programmes and other policy measures to encourage rural landholders to plant native forests on their land has first meant understanding what factors influence farmers’ willingness to plant trees.
A team of Manaaki Whenua researchers including Drs Peter Edwards, Maksym Polyakov and Geoff Kaine has been working to determine the drivers, barriers, and efficacy of incentives for rural landowners to engage in native afforestation. In a project funded by MPI, researchers used a choice experiment to evaluate the trade-offs among various incentives to encourage native afforestation and regeneration on private lands.
The survey was completed by over 600 rural landholders throughout New Zealand, including dairy, sheep, beef and other livestock farmers and lifestyle block owners. Researchers found that rural landholders would be interested in joining voluntary programmes to establish native forests if they were provided with appropriate monetary and non-monetary incentives and tree planting is aligned with their properties’ characteristics.
They found differences in preferences exist between afforestation/planting and reversion/regeneration programmes, and landholders had diverse preferences for different elements of the programmes.
While monetary incentives were found to be vital to increasing enrolment and area commitment to both types of programmes, providing seedlings or finding seedlings suppliers were the most important non-monetary incentives for enrolment, along with Government assistance in applications and paperwork, planning and species selection for afforestation/planting programmes.
Results also showed:
- Rural landowners’ property characteristics are important determinants of both enrolment and area commitment to the programmes.
- The size of the properties did not affect enrolment but is an essential determinant of the area committed.
- Farms with steeper topography are more likely to be enrolled in the reversion/regeneration
programmes, but topography does not affect enrolment in afforestation/planting programmes.
It was also found the presence of wetlands is associated with a higher probability of enrolment and a larger area committed to both types of programmes, whereas the presence of bush and scrub on land is associated with a higher probability of enrolment and a larger area committed to reversion/regeneration programmes.
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