The Otago Daily Times has recently been pushing a story (parroted in the NZ Herald) about a suggestion of charging tourists for entry to National Parks in New Zealand. A further ODT story from the same day (last Thursday) briefly interviewed several visitors tramping some of New Zealand’s Great Walks, and there’s also an ODT online survey requesting people’s opinions. The story’s also being followed by Queenstown’s Mountain Scene. (Update 13-Feb-2012: At the time of posting, it looks as if I missed this analysis from the Nelson Mail; Update 17-Feb-2012: Wilderness Magazine also has a look at this.)

This isn’t a Department of Conservation thing, at least in any public way. The suggestion comes from the Ministry of Economic Development, as part of its briefing to the incoming Minister of Tourism, who just happens to be the country’s Prime Minister on this occasion. Such briefings are standard for most government departments after an election, reporting on their current state of affairs, even if their minister hasn’t changed. If you want to see the actual briefing, it’s available here. The relevant area is between about paragraphs 39 and 46, titled ‘Capturing greater value from international visitors’.

It’s important to recognise that it’s nothing more than a suggestion at this point in time, and might easily amount to nothing. Personally I think it’s a bad idea. Something I find most attractive about New Zealand’s back-country spaces is that fundamentally they’re not run as money making tourism juggernauts, although that’s about what MED is suggesting should happen given that part of its proposal mentions taking advantage of people’s “willingness to pay”. Surrounding businesses and concessionaires do that by providing extra things on top, but the land itself is available to all for entry.
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