Harvesting and marketing some pruned redwood giants
New Zealand Tree
Grower February 2007
Jeff Tombleson
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| Felling a 96-year-old pruned redwood tree
which required a push from the beak of the loader. |
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| The bigger stems had large end diameters of
over two metres |
In 1997 Forest Research (now Scion) harvested and marketed 26 giant
redwood trees which were felled for various reasons including their
close proximity to buildings. The trees had been planted in 1901, the
same year as the neighbouring trees located in the Redwood Memorial
Grove, Rotorua. The trees had an average diameter of approximately one
metre and an average height of 55 metres.
The biggest trees had diameters over two metres and therefore the tree
fellers had to search out long bars for their chainsaws. Most of the
trees were perfectly balanced and despite being almost completely
severed, each tree had to be pushed over using the beak of a loader.
The average merchantable weight of each tree was over 13 tonnes.
In earlier times the trees had been pruned to a height of over 12
metres. Given the very large log size, it was a rarity for such high
quality pruned logs to be presented to the market. That is unless the
Redwood Memorial Grove should suffer catastrophic wind-throw in the
future.
Following vigorous marketing these magnificent pruned logs were sold
for $120 a tonne on truck,
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| Many of the pruned logs were custom sawn to
full length clears |
which represented an average radiata pine
pruned log price at the time. The unpruned logs were sold for $85 a
tonne and used for sawing into large dimensions and profiling for use
in log home construction. Many of the pruned logs were also custom sawn
into clear grade boards and sold for $950 a cubic metre to a company
which used it for construction of exposed wooden garage doors, as a
substitution for imported western
red cedar.
While the above prices are not enticing, it will take more than 26
pruned redwood trees to create sustained supply and demand, and
hopefully prices that will meet grower expectations.
(top)
Jeff Tombleson is a former Forest
Research scientist, now self employed.
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