Pamu to Convert 600 Hectares to Native Forest for Nature Credits

Pamu said it will convert 600 hectares of farmland into native forest over the next three to five years, a move that puts one of New Zealand’s biggest state-owned farming businesses at the center of a new nature-credit economy.

The plan is meant to generate credits from land the company sees as less productive or more vulnerable across its 365,000-hectare farm network. Pamu said it has already retired more than 16,000 hectares of land, and its nature investment officer, Annabel Davies, framed the shift as a way to unlock value from marginal ground that farmers have long written off.

That pitch lands in the middle of a policy fight over what kind of planting New Zealand should reward. The country’s emissions system has historically favored fast-growing pine forests over native forests, which take longer to mature but can deliver carbon storage over a longer horizon and add biodiversity, erosion control and water quality benefits. Conservation advocates and land managers have warned that large-scale pine planting can worsen erosion, increase pest pressure and reshape rural land use in ways local communities may not want.

The government is now trying to redraw that market. Under Ministry for the Environment guidance released in June 2025, the voluntary nature credits system is supposed to attract private investment to protect threatened species and habitats and reduce carbon emissions. The ministry said its role includes direction setting, standard setting, assurance and transparency, while integrity rules require projects to be additional to business as usual, durable, measurable and verifiable, transparent, respectful of rights and accurately described.

Those safeguards matter because the government has already said New Zealand companies spent millions on carbon and nature credits mainly offshore in the prior year. Officials want a domestic market that keeps more of that money at home, while still allowing credits to be recognized if they are accredited by reputable international bodies or pass an independent assurance process in the months ahead.

Pamu’s deal with the nonprofit True Nature is an early test of that model. True Nature said it is linked to Trees That Count and Project Crimson, giving it more than a decade of restoration experience and access to planting and landholder networks. Robyn Haugh, True Nature’s chief executive, said the initiative could help landholders restore degraded land without the upfront capital and give large companies a credible domestic place to buy credits instead of sending money offshore.

The stakes extend beyond one farm company. The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment warned in April 2025 that current policy settings could drive more than 900,000 hectares of new forests between 2022 and 2050, with radiata pine still the likeliest outcome under current incentives. New Zealand now has to prove that a native-forest credit market can deliver measurable ecological gain, not just a new financial product with greener branding.