Windy Tops

Tag: government policies

  • Fairness in paying for search and rescue

    Lately I’ve been following a story in the news about two stranded kayakers who were rescued, sent a bill, and are refusing to pay. I guess I’ve been finding the whole concept of being sent a bill for a search and rescue operation difficult to grasp, because standard practice in New Zealand is that they’re supposed to be free, specifically so people should not be discouraged from requesting help when they’re in trouble. Perhaps someone in the know can comment, but I suppose this is different because neither the New Zealand Police nor the Search and Rescue Coordination Centre were notified or involved in the search. What bothers me most about this story is that until now, I’d generally been under the impression that rescues were free, even as written into law.

    [Edit 29-April-2013: If you’ve stumbled upon this post when searching for information about how Search and Rescue is charged (or not charged) in New Zealand, I’d also strongly recommend reading this much more recent post, in which I’ve provided more detail about how the system works.]

    The gist of the situation is that on 3rd December 2009 the Shotover River was flooded, but the kayakers (reportedly experienced) went anyway despite having been warned against it, and despite the local tourist rafting and jet boat operators refusing to operate. The kayakers had a mis-hap, losing one of the kayaks and with one of them breaking a finger. The empty kayak was spotted down-river, and on the reasonable assumption that someone could be in serious trouble, authorities of the Queenstown Lakes District Council sent a helicopter to investigate. The two kayakers were discovered on opposite banks of the river, and reportedly “very pleased to see the helicopter”. The harbourmaster of the council later sent a bill to recover the $4,000 cost, and now plans to go to small claims court to get it back.

    Most of the media (the Herald and Stuff are representative) report the story from a perspective that the kayakers were warned, shouldn’t have gone, and wasted everyone’s time. The kayakers themselves (un-named as best as I can tell) claim that they weren’t in serious trouble, never requested a rescue, and don’t see why they should have to pay for it. With a quick search I’ve noticed that several people have blogged thoughts about this story in various places (some with following discussions), notably Michelle over at Love in a Tent, David at Paddling Instructor, Kerry L at Kayak & Kayaking, and even (added 22-12-2010) a discussion provoked by James on Geekzone.

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  • Te Araroa to avoid Oriwa Ridge in the Tararuas

    New Zealand’s Department of Conservation has decided not to establish a track along Oriwa Ridge in the Tararuas as part of Te Araroa — The Long Pathway. Instead, DOC is recommending that Te Araroa go via the exposed tops in the Tararuas, via places like Te Matawai, Dracophyllum, Nichols.

    The full published results are available on DOC’s website.

    The original proposal of the Te Araroa Trust was to go more or less via this route, but the Trust put together the alternative proposal to build a track along Oriwa Ridge, below the bush-line, after the DOC Wellington Hawkes Bay conservancy expressed concern that the earlier route could be too dangerous for the often less experienced trampers that Te Araroa might be expected to attract. This has been brewing for about a year now, and has unveiled much controversy over balancing the seclusion of dedicated wilderness areas and the promotion of recreation, and all that.

    Having gone through the submission process with 218 submissions, DOC has decided that its initial concerns are no longer relevant. It’s decided that for various reasons Oriwa Ridge probably isn’t that much safer anyway, that the reasons against the Oriwa Ridge proposal out-weigh the reasons in favour, and ultimately that there will be no track built through Oriwa Ridge. Reasoning that the Te Araroa Trust has since included rugged exposed alpine routes in other regions of the track, DOC has now also come out in favour of the original Te Araroa proposal that it initially had concerns about, to follow the existing and more exposed route through the Tararuas at higher altitude. As long as everyone who walks this section of the Te Araroa Trail takes standard precautions (ie. doesn’t take undue risks), this should be a win for everyone.

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  • Perspectives from Laos, and mining the Conservation Estate

    I’ve just returned from a few weeks in South East Asia, much of which was spent in Laos, albeit mostly on the tourist trail, and it’s a wonderful country. Much of what’s recently been in the media, as well as reading one of Robb’s recent posts regarding our government’s new policy of “stock-taking” the conservation estate in preparation for mineral extraction, has prompted some thoughts.

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    I’ll dispense with the complete story of our holiday, except to say that Laos is a fantastic place. (Some photos of the whole thing may be found here.) It’s not yet quite so touristy as neighbouring Thailand and Vietnam (having to pay the US$1 going rate to the Vietnamese immigration guy at the land border just so he’d stamp my passport was a disappointing introduction to Vietnam), and Laos has only been generally open to tourists since the 1990s. There’s a project to at least double tourism over the next decade, adapting facilities in to bring in more overseas money. The place will probably change a lot in that time, and I only hope the attraction of the tourist dollar doesn’t cause any more of the country to become like Vang Vieng, which ten years ago was a tiny village but has now turned into a giant pub crawl town aimed at young English-speaking young backpackers who typically go there to get hammered.

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    Laos has a devastatingly war-torn history through the last few centuries, having been hastily usurped into “French Indochina” in 1893 as part of the race between France and Britain to be first to colonise as much of the world as possible. Not long after the communists finally kicked out the French, Laos became tangled in the Vietnam war, and the USA dropped more bombs on eastern Laos between 1964 and 1973 than were dropped during the entire second world war. (Reportedly that’s about one B-52 payload being dropped every eight minutes day and night over 9 years!) To this day, Laos holds the unenvious title of being the most bombed country, anywhere, ever. It’s a sad story, especially having seen how polite and generous the people are, but on the other hand it’s good to see it’s no longer happening. The entire region is full of limestone, dotted with numerous pinnacle structures and caves. During the various wars, people frequently hid in caves, surrounding themselves with Budda statues for protection. Until relatively recently, typical life expectencies were as low as about 45, with about 25% of children dying in their first few years. With roughly 1/3 of the 260 million bombs that were dropped never having detonated, people who live in that region still suffer indiscriminately from tripping unexploded live ammunition.
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  • Wellington [anti] smoking petitions battling it out

    Nearly two years ago I wrote about how I often find the lingering smoke annoying when I go for walks around town. It’s difficult to walk along a main street in Wellington’s CBD during certain times of day without having people in front breathing out cigarette smoke (much worse than campfire smoke), holding cigarettes venting smoke in the faces of people crowded behind, and throwing used cigarette butts into the city’s drainage system, causing even more problems [Ref 1] [Ref 2]. Anecdotally, I think this has become more of an issue since the Smoke-Free Environments Amendment Act of 2003 came into force. The act made it illegal for people to smoke inside most workplaces and also any cafe’s/restaurants (because they’re other people’s workplaces), but didn’t do much to account for the changes this would cause in outside environments. It forces people to smoke on the streets rather than inside, and it means virtually all restaurants, pubs and cafe’s (not wanting to lose customers to competitors) have pushed their smoking sections onto tables outside. Frequently these outside areas around footpaths are specifically designed with extra shelter from the elements, which helps cigarette smoke to linger for a very long time.

    Late last month, a petition was opened on the Wellington City Council’s e-petition page titled Ban on smoking along the city’s “Golden Mile”, with the idea being that smoking on the main central Wellington streets should be completely banned — so far, the only CBD street in which a by-law prevents smoking is Cable Car Lane. As I write this, it has 550 signatures. To add to all of this, however, another e-petition titled Continue to allow smoking along Wellington’s Golden Mile was created by another local today, intending to show support for an opposing view that smoking shouldn’t be banned.
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  • New Topo50 and Topo250 Maps for New Zealand

    If you stay informed about maps, you may already know that Land Information New Zealand (LINZ) will be officially changing New Zealand’s Mapping System in September 2009. There will be several obvious changes for people who use LINZ maps for navigation, one of which is that New Zealand’s map grid will change. This is a consequence of the Geodetic Datum (from which latitudes and longitudes are derived and on which the entire maps are based) having been changed several years ago, and LINZ is finally updating its maps to catch up with its techniques. When this happens, LINZ also intends to make a collection of other substantial changes to how maps are produced, how they look, and how they’ll be used. Most obviously for people into tramping, the well known NZMS260 series (1:50000 scale) and the NZMS262 series (1:250000 scale) of maps will be completely withdrawn from publication, and respectively replaced by two new series’ of maps called Topo50 and Topo250.

    LINZ has a large section of their website which describes the project in detail, explaining how it will affect people’s use of maps, GPS devices and other related systems. It’s good to see this actually happening — we’ve been hearing about it for several years now.

    Everything you need to know is behind the link above, but I thought I might try to summarise the changes, perhaps to help people understand it better but as much to help myself to get a grasp on what’s changing and why. I’m doing my best to get this as correct as I can, but please keep in mind that I’m an amateur at this. If you notice inaccuracies or omissions, I’d appreciate it if you could point them out by posting a comment. If necessary, I’ll correct the post and credit as appropriate. Meanwhile if you’re keen to get more authoritative information from the source, a good place to start is the LINZ Publications & Other Resources page. The downloadable Topo50 map Reading Guide and the Where in the World Are We? booklets are especially helpful, and much of what I’ve written here is really just a dumbed down version of them.
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  • The right to walk from A to B

    I’ve found it interesting reading about the events in Auckland over the last few days, during which several thousand protesters broke through police barriers to walk and cycle over the Auckland Harbour Bridge. This was against the wishes of the New Zealand Transport Agency, which operates the bridge for vehicles only and had told the group they couldn’t walk over the bridge on its 50th anniversary. The protest was arranged by the GetAcross campaign, although the organisers claim they never asked people to break police barriers.

    I’ve never lived in Auckland and it’s not a place I know much about, but I was very surprised to discover that it’s not actually legal to walk over the Auckland Harbour Bridge. After all, if it’s illegal to cross the bridge without a vehicle then it seems like a very long way to walk between St Mary’s Bay and Northcote Point. Google Maps tells me that it turns a 7.1 km walk straight over the bridge into an estimated 12.5 hour 60.8 km walk, complete with warnings from Google Maps about possibly not having adequate footpaths along the way! Perhaps someone with a better knowledge of Auckland could confirm if this is accurate? It seems very strange, though. Several other bridges that come to my mind all have free walking routes — these being the Sydney Harbour Bridge (in Sydney), the Brooklyn Bridge (in New York), and the Manhatten Bridge (also in New York). Not having something similar for an iconic bridge in a place such as Auckland seems to be a confounding oversight!
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  • Positive news for New Zealand walking access rights

    It’s been good news that in September 2008, the Walking Access Commission was established (thanks to the Walking Access Act) with the role of facilitating walking access within New Zealand. Some key commitments of this commission are to help negotiate walking access where there is none, to help resolve disputes, to work on an acceptable code of conduct, and to provide useful information for recreational walkers about where they can actually go. WIth respect to the last commitment, as has been noted recently in the NZ Tramper forums, the commission has recently put out a Request for Proposals (RFP) for the development of a system that, if it works as intended, will make it much easier for members of the public to access information about specifically where in New Zealand there is public right of access.

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  • A snapshot of New Zealand conservation history

    The sanctity of any conserved area, be it national park, scenic reserve, or historic reserve, can be violated at will by the State acting under Sections 7, 32 and 39 of the National Parks Act, under Sections 16, 34 and 97 of the Scenic Reserves and Domains Act or, if either of these avenues by any mischance should fail, under Sections 13(a), 311 and 312 of the Public Works Act. Neither Parliament, nor, least of all, the public at large, need be informed of what is proposed to be done. The first they know is, all to often, heralded by works activity or accomplished fact.

    — Dr J. T. Salmon, Senior Lecturer in Biology, Victoria University of Wellington. Heritage Destroyed — The Crisis in Scenery Preservation in New Zealand. 1960. Page 11.

    I remember growing up in the 1980s with the devoted belief that New Zealand was a clean and green, environmentally sound country. We had a wonderful conservation estate that was open for exploration and fantastic scenery, though it took me a while to discover it properly. New Zealand was completely anti-nuclear, unlike the French who were exploding test nukes nearby, and in related actions committed acts of terrorism in New Zealand, and it was terrorism according to France’s own condemnation before French agents were caught and its government was forced to admit guilt. France threatened wide-spread European Economic Embargoes against New Zealand until we gave back their secret agents, or something like that. This entire event was a major boost to sentiments against nuclear power, which New Zealand didn’t have and therefore New Zealand was clean and green. There was even a movie about the valiant New Zealand neighbourhood watch group catching two bumbling French secret agents (or something like that), starring well known New Zealanders such as Sam Neill and Xena Warrior Princess!

    My friends and I knew that New Zealand was clean and green because the French government was exploding nuclear bombs in our back yard, and we weren’t. And we also had earthquake drills in school during which we screamed and dived under tables, and mohawks were the new rage of fashion. If it were today, I imagine we’d be clean and green because we don’t like the way Japanese vessels hunt intelligent friendly whales in the southern ocean. Fallacies are a wonderful thing for self-assurance.

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  • Te Araroa, National Cycleways and Recessions

    This morning I was reading Michelle’s latest post about the NZ government’s pending plans to help offset the recession by spending $50 million to build a length-of-New-Zealand cycleway. Michelle’s thoughts, which have been similar to mine, reminded me of how weird I thought the idea of a cycleway was when I first heard about it a few weeks ago. It’s not so much aversion to having a cycleway as the suspicion of why its has suddenly emerged now.
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  • New Walking, Cycling and Track Recreation policies approved for Wellington

    In September I noted that the Wellington City Council was consulting on its recreation activities policy. This has now progressed, and the warm and fluffy press release branch of the Wellington City Council has now announced that three new policy documents have now been adopted, respectively for Walking, Cycling and Track Recreation.

    In summary, the press release claims that the adopted policies are a beneficial improvement over the old policies, and that the “majority” of tracks around Wellington will now be shared for walking and cycling. Although I’m not personally involved in cycling, this sounds like a sensible idea to me, certainly as far as off-street tracks are concerned. People already ride mountain bikes in many places where they haven’t officially been supposed to according to local rules that (I think) are out of date, and it works out quite well, at least as far as I’ve seen.

    I meet a lot of cyclists out and about around Wellington tracks, and without many exceptions they’ve nearly always been happy and smiley and polite and very respectful to other track users. Furthermore, mountain bike enthusiasts in particular often tend to help with keeping some of the less popular walking tracks walkable… both actively and simply through using uncommon tracks more frequently. This includes a few that I like walking myself and would probably be overgrown with gorse much more quickly if they didn’t have the odd bike pushing through.

    The actual policies aren’t yet available for objective review because the changes are still being inserted and formatted and prepared for public view, and so on, but they should be available in due course. It’ll be worth taking a proper look at them when they’re available.