Windy Tops

Tag: access rights

  • The Walking Access Mapping System Goes Mobile

    I’ve recurringly written about the Walking Access Mapping System since it was put online by the Walking Access Commission. The system collates masses of data from local and central goverment. It’s very helpful when trying to figure out places which are legal to walk, especially when physical features don’t always make the divisions between public and private land clear, nor the location of legal roads and access ways.

    wams-Screenshot_2016-03-14-22-58-43

    Earlier today, the Walking Access Commission announced that there’s finally a mobile edition of the WAMS. The announcement doesn’t seem to have received much attention, but I think it’s a valuable extension.

    Until now, the WAMS has been a fairly clunky, Flash-heavy website that’s not entirely easy to use on a mobile device. Exporting information for other devices hasn’t been a trivial thing. For example, it’s generally necessary to manually trace lines and waypoints over the top of the WAMS maps, prior to exporting those lines.

    Hopefully features like the ability to export data will improve over time. Meanwhile, the mobile edition of the WAMS means that it should not even be necessary to export info in many cases. If you’re in a place with mobile coverage, and want to find out which legal access ways are nearby, it’s potentially more a case of pulling out a smartphone, visiting http://www.wams.org.nz/, and seeing what’s around. (Try http://wams.org.nz/wams_mobile/ if your mobile browser is not auto-detected.)

  • Preserving Outdoor Access

    Radio New Zealand’s Insight programme has looked at public access rights and the conflict over paper roads in New Zealand. The 28 minute audio programme can be found at the end of the linked page.

    Paper Roads are legal rights of way, effectively public land, but some aren’t practically navigable as roads. Some also go through private property, and have sometimes been treated as inconvenient or non-existant by owners of surrounding land.

    Conflict between property owners and people who want access through their land via these rights of way has been a festering issue in recent years. Several years ago, the Walking Access Commission was created, with a general role of liaising between the sides. I wrote about this in 2009.

    From its beginnings, one of the early problems the Commission identified that recreationalists were having was not actually knowing where they had public access rights to go. An early success stories therefore, in my view, has been the Walking Access Mapping System. That system collates together information held by LINZ and countless local councils, and makes it clear where legal public access actually exists throughout New Zealand.

    The Insight episode tracks down people on both sides of the issue, and it’s worth a listen for its presentation of the problems being faced.

  • That Paparoa National Park Great Walk

    In September I wrote about precedents around Great Walks seeming to become skewed. This morning I think that’s finally happened. Nick Smith has announced that a new Great Walk will be created in Paparoa National Park, to commemorate the 29 people killed in the Pike River Mine accident of 2010.

    I do not for a moment wish to belittle the obvious tragedy for the people who died in the Pike River explosion, their families and their friends. But purely as justification for a Great Walk, I really don’t understand this at all. If there’s to be a new track, then why a Great Walk instead of a regular track?

    In 1992, DOC itself justified the Great Walks concept as being “to manage impacts on New Zealand’s most highly used tracks” [FMC Bulletin 111, Oct ’92, page 18]. This was stated at a time when all of New Zealand’s current Great Walks were either in place, or planned. 23 years later, the newly-planned Paparoa Great Walk is not highly used. Therefore what has changed, why has it changed, and can we expect the same new principles to be applied for a new batch of Great Walks?

    In recent years, Great Walks have become a major brand. Tourists seek out the Great Walks because they’re great walks. The only rationale I can detect in this is to latch on to that brand and attract tourists to a local area, and in fact Nick Smith’s raw press release stresses that “it will bring tourism and economic development to the West Coast”.

    Smith’s press release also mentions a couple of other things (protecting the area, ensuring access to the resting place of 29 miners), but neither of those other two actually require a Great Walk. They could be achieved with a simple track combined with applying protection already available under existing law. Therefore those claims are really just government spin.

    If generating local tourism and boosting a local economy is the real reason for creating a new Great Walk, we should be asking some serious questions around what impact it will have on future decisions, because this decision seems very politicised.
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  • Justifying Great Walks

    News emerged yesterday that a new Great Walk is being considered through Mount Creighton Station, near Queenstown, once tenure review has been sorted. Most references point at this Otago Daily Times’ article, but the original rendition seems to have been produced by the same author on behalf of Mountain Scene, and specifically links the claim back to a document from the Overseas Investment Office that was obtained under the Official Information Act. Wilderness Magazine has also chimed in, and produced a clearer map of the likely route.

    I’m not sure what to think except to have some looming concern that the Great Walk concept may have become very skewed in the last few years. Great Walks have a wow factor where tourism is concerned. They tend to attract tourists, who hunt them out, but the presence of a Great Walk can also have a negative effect on an area, certainly for its atmosphere and the freedom and flexibility with which one might visit it.

    In addition to cutting a walking super-highway through what might once have been a more remote environment, Great Walks come with baggage. Bylaws frequently restrict camping. Back-country huts tend to shift from the flexible back-country ticket system onto a rigid booking system. Accommodation as a whole is sometimes only available in highly structured sequences, making it difficult to plan a trip which does anything other than follow a tourist conveyor belt. Tracks are hardened and widened, to make them more durable.

    The presence of Great Walks, and their rigid structure, is in conflict with the traditional legally enshrined values of our National Parks and Conservation Areas. These values prioritise freedom of entry and exploration for as long as it’s not unreasonably destructive to the rest of the park. Great Walks are, therefore, a compromise which should only be used where needed.
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  • The Walking Access Awards of 2014

    If you haven’t heard, the Walking Access Commission (WAC) is requesting nominations for its 2014 Walking Access Awards. If you have any ideas for individuals, organisations or other entities to nominate, head over here and follow the instructions. Nominations close on 18th July.

    The Walking Access Commission was formed with the Walking Access Act of 2008. Its main role is to provide leadership and coordination for negotiating (for example) access across private land and, where possible, aiming to facilitate trusting relationships between people on both sides. One of the coolest and easiest-to-appreciate things which has come out of the Walking Access Commission so far, however, has been the Walking Access Mapping System, also known as the WAMS.

    In its early days, the WAC asked recreationalists what the most useful things were that it could do to help people access public spaces. A popular response was that it was very difficult to find out where we’re actually allowed to go, especially in the midst of private land that often surrounds the conservation estate. If you didn’t already know for some reason that there was meant to be public access in a certain place, it wouldn’t always be obvious to try and find out. In 2009, the responses caused the Walking Access Commission to commission creation of the WAMS as one of its first tasks.
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