Greenpeace – Planting Trees without Approval?

That’s the way I read this story:

Over 1000 trees planted today by 30 Greenpeace volunteers in a central North Island block of land have been pulled out.

The volunteers began at 7.30am today to “re-forest” around 1600 square metres of land that had been cleared for dairy farming.

Greenpeace climate campaigner Simon Boxer said the re-planting campaign was aimed at drawing more attention to the large amounts of forestry land in the Tahorakuri Forest, northeast of Taupo, being converted to dairy farming.

But state owned Landcorp chief executive Chris Kelly which leased the land said the trees had been removed soon after the volunteers left.

“The owners of the land have taken some action, the trees have gone and as I understand it the trees are being donated to a local group,” he said.

Some questions seem to come to mind:

1. Where do these idiots get off just deciding they can come on to land they don’t own and start planting things on it? In America that is known as trespass and is against the law. I guess its different in New Zealand. It seems that something like that is possible based on this:

Greenpeace communications manager Suzette Jackson said police had arrived mid-morning, and warned the volunteers against trespassing further.

“We left then because we weren’t trying to get our team arrested, and we managed to plant all our trees.

2. The owners had to spend money and time to remove all this crap – can they sue Greenpeace to get it back? Would be an interesting test case – but again this would assume that New Zealand has a functioning legal system that actually recognizes personal property.

3. And why is this such a big problem? Apparently its a new front in the war on cow farts.

“It’s not a traditional Greenpeace action. Since we’re just starting to work on the agricultural issues, specially on dairy conversion, we want to start off a lot more calmly.”

Forestry was being replaced with one of the most greenhouse gas-intensive industries possible and emissions in New Zealand were increasing dramatically as a result, he said.