Windy Tops

Tag: closed land

  • Trespassing from public land

    A story hit the news not long ago, based on a DOC media release (alternative Stuff rendition), where a group of people (labelled ‘hunters’ but better described as a group of dope smoking idiots with guns) have been trespassed from Kaweka Forest Park. It sounds as if they’ve been going in, acting like obnoxious morons and between that breaking a variety of laws and rules in ways that ruin other people’s experience, such as discharging weapons after dark, burying caches of illegal stuff (weapons, cannabis), and so on.

    It doesn’t seem unreasonable to deal with people like this, and the behaviour described isn’t something I want anyone to have to put up with, but one thing that confused me was the reference to Trespass Law.

    The Conservation Act and the National Parks Act essentially guarantee public access to public land, unless it’s closed or access is restricted for a variety of specific reasons that are specified in law. I won’t get into the detail, but a couple of years back I wrote about it all. The result is that DOC can’t simply tell you to get out, at least without certain paperwork which isn’t common: its role is typically one of a caretaker and not a gatekeeper or an owner.
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  • Recap on the recent Milford Track accident – DOC’s Review

    Kathryn Ryan interviewed Allan Munn this morning on Nine to Noon (Radio NZ National). Allan Munn is the Department of Conservation’s Southern Region Services Director. The interview regards changes being made following the death, in May 2014, of a person who was swept away from the Milford Track.

    This morning’s 20 minute interview can be listened to here. It’s also been reported on in The Press, and by Wilderness Magazine.

    The incident which sparked this review occurred when the group were on the Milford Track out of the main tourist season, after many of the standard “Great Walk” style facilities are removed. It’s not uncommon for people to visit outside the booking season, whether to avoid higher hut fees or after having been too late to book at an earlier time. It remains public land with open access, and can be relatively safe with good preparation and advice, and an ability to assess conditions. The group didn’t seem to have been be prepared for the reduced facilities, nor properly aware of it. This combined with other factors probably led to bad decisions and eventually resulted in the accident.

    I wrote down some of my own thoughts about this a few months ago.

    DOC has now completed an internal review. It’s decided that safety processes are fundamentally sound, but certain things could still be improved upon. During the interview Mr Munn noted that DOC had “a range of contacts with that party” prior to the event. The party members either didn’t hear the available advice, or chose to ignore it and take their chances. In the face of this, there’s probably little that could have reasonably and immediately been done in that specific case.

    More generally, though, DOC’s review has acknowledged that there are problems with getting key messages across to the masses in the face of modern forms of media, much of which is out of DOC’s control. It’s also noting higher numbers of visitors of limited skills and experience aiming to walk the Milford Track during the buffer zone between the end of the tourist season and when the most dangerous winter conditions set in.
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  • The Price of Great Walks

    Last month an incident occurred, out of season, on the Milford Track. I’ll reflect on a few things before getting to it.

    In New Zealand we have an enshrined legal right to enter most parts of the Conservation Estate. (I wrote more about how this works, over here.) By design in law, it’s difficult for people to be fenced out for their protection. In exchange visitors are considered responsible for their own safety. After all, one person’s dangerous place could be another adequately skilled person’s source of adventure.

    Great Walks, however, don’t always fit nicely into this framework. Similar concepts have existed previously, but the modern idea of “Great Walks” began with the Department of Conservation’s effort towards its mandate of fostering recreation. The idea has been to consolidate and market several of the most iconic tramping trips, and make them relatively accessible for a large number of people of varying abilities.

    Over time they’ve become intensively used. By the latter end of the 1990s, booking systems were being introduced to control overcrowding. A booking system can’t restrict anyone’s entry to the land, but tactical limitations of facility use (especially huts), combined with bylaws to disallow camping in certain areas, now makes it impractical to walk some Great Walks without booking ahead.

    The Milford Track is one such Great Walk. In the booking season, between November and May, it becomes a beautifully iconic conveyor belt of tourists. The speed at which you might want to walk it doesn’t matter, because “the track takes 4 days to walk“. This is thanks to the requirement of booking all three huts at once for sequential nights, with these huts being the only legal place to stay. If this doesn’t work for you, you could either search for a way to camp further than 500 metres from the line of the track (difficult with the geography), or run the entire track without stopping.
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