Wilderness May 2017

TOURISM GROWTH in New Zealand, just like our other main export earner – dairy, which is blamed for fouling rivers – is proving to be unsustainable, at least from a national park user’s perspective. The underfunding of DOC, which is severe, can be seen in overloaded facilities, straining infrastructure and dubious decisions to allow greater incursions by private businesses into ever more of the conservation estate. And that’s just on the recreation side of the ledger. DOC’s primary purpose is conservation, but New Zealand’s woeful rate of species decline carries on. In our story ‘The parks, they are a changin’ (p34) we look at the options available to us to properly fund DOC and compare the way parks are run here to how they are run in America. We could…

The heroes have left the building YOUR WRITER was lucky to find some solitude while paddling Abel Tasman National Park (‘Meeting your heroes’, March 2017). Unfortunately, the article touched only briefly on the impact of mass tourism in this beautiful part of the country. Having spent an extensive time recently in and around the many anchorages and small beaches of the park in a boat and sea kayak, I feel compelled to say the impact of tourism on this coastline is increasingly detrimental. Last Christmas, it was not uncommon to see flotillas of guided kayakers descend locust-like on beaches while local beach users tried to defend tiny patches of sand to allow their children access to the water or for space to play. When guides were asked if this overcrowding…

Get your photo here to published receive an Opinel No.5 folding knife worth $20. Learn more about Opinel at ampro.co.nz. Last Weekend submission criteria can be found at wildernessmag.co.nz…

A LANDSCAPE architecture student from Wellington has created a redesign of the Hollyford Track to make it wheelchair accessible. Matt McKone, an avid tramper, completed the redesign for his master’s degree from Victoria University. “One time when I was tramping, I thought that if a freak accident were to happen while I was playing rugby, or a car crash or something, I could lose the ability to go into the mountains. So, I decided to use my landscape architecture thesis to find a way to create that access.” Consulting wheelchair access advocacy groups such as the Hal-berg Disability Sport Foundation, McKone designed a proposal which involves a series of interventions that would allow wheelchair users to complete the 56km, multi-day track. While it would be impossible to eliminate inclines and…

WE LIVE OUTSIDE TIME, IN A WAY. We only vaguely know what date it is, certainly not days of the week SEVEN YEARS AGO , Miriam Lancewood and her partner walked away from their home in Blenheim, opting for a more simple, stripped-down way of life in the wilderness. Lancewood, a 33-year-old from the Netherlands and her Kiwi partner Peter, 63, sleep in a tent most of the time, hunt wild game, and cook their meals over an open fire. The couple met while in India, and after traveling together for a few years settled in Blenheim. One day, Peter suggested they try living off the land “We went tramping every weekend, and Peter said, ‘why don’t we just live here, and organise ourselves well, and do it rationally and…

THE FANTAIL or piwakawaka would have to be one of New Zealand’s best known birds due to its confiding nature, often approaching within a metre or two of people. They are widely distributed throughout the country and live in a variety of habitats – including native and plantation forest, scrub-land, farm shelterbelts, orchards and well-treed suburban parks and gardens. Their altitudinal range extends from sea level up to the snow line. There are two colour phases or ‘morphs’ with the more common pied morph occurring throughout its range and the black morph comprising up to five per cent of the South Island population. The black morph occurs only occasionally in the North Island. The pied variety has a greyish head, very obvious white eyebrows with a brown back and rump.…