Tag: public access

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.

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.)

14 March, 2016
Unofficial Tracks in Egmont National Park

Track Closed signs in Egmont National Park.

I hope that some of the quotes in Wednesday’s article via the Taranaki Daily News have been printed incorrectly or out of context.

In it, a senior DOC ranger, referring to Egmont National Park, comments about people unofficially marking and maintaining old tracks, which DOC no longer officially maintains. Sometimes people even mark new tracks of their own making!

The problem? Other people might follow them. They might get lost or distracted from DOC’s official tracks. The unofficial routes might not have been routed or maintained to the same safety standards as DOC would have ensured. It might be harder to find people if they get lost, because they’ll be away from the main tracks.

I have mixed thoughts about this, but mostly dismay with DOC’s apparent stance. There may be issues where people are causing significant damage to the surrounding environment by marking and maintaining their tracks. If people are placing giant markers that are damaging or out of character, or are themselves creating a hazard in ways which rival what the nearby outdoor creates all by itself, then fair enough to raise those specific instances. But beyond this I’m struggling to see an issue with people using and marking alternative routes.
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29 May, 2015
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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27 December, 2014
On New Zealand Conservation Estate Fees for Tourists

It’s interesting to see that David Round, a member of the Aoraki Conservation Board, is calling for foreigners to be charged more than NZ Citizens and Residents for use of the Conservation Estate.

From that single article, it’s unclear to me exactly what’s being proposed by Mr Round. The Timaru Herald’s headline suggests charging foreigners more for hut fees. The base complaint is about “enormous non-payment” of hut fees, and of it being very hard to police. Inconsistent with the article’s title, the proposed solution seems to involve something about an “international access pass”, which would not be directly attributed to huts but would be required to “enter larger parts of the conservation estate”.

Charging higher amounts for tourists is a topic which comes up recurringly, but so far has not gained any traction. There are a variety of relevant factors, both to do with practicality and law.

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14 February, 2014
My submission about increasing maximum penalties on the Conservation Estate

I’ve finally put my submission in for the Conservation (Natural Heritage Protection) Bill, which (if successful) will increase maximum penalties available for many crimes on the Conservation Estate by about ten-fold. Often this will be good. For example, judges have commented on the frustration with the low penalties they’ve been restricted to when sentencing international criminals who’ve been caught smuggling out protected wildlife for sale on the black market. Enabling a higher penalty will increase the risk, set a much higher black market price on our wildlife, and hopefully make the practice less common. The Bill has cross-party support for these types of reasons, and will most likely enter law. You can read everything they said about it when it had its first day in parliament over here.

My main concern is that the existing indirectly-specified $10,000/1-year-jail penalty for entering “closed” Conservation Areas was already disproportionate and inconsistent with the $500 fine for a nearly identical National Park situation. Following the Bill, that inconsistency will be magnified to a $100,000/2-year-jail penalty compared with a $5,000 fine. This is part of what I discussed in my earlier post regarding DoC and the word “closed”.

The Bill is now at the stage of receiving public submissions, which will be considered by the Local Government and Environment Select Committee (a selected committee of sitting MPs) to make recommendations for any changes to the Bill before it’s sent back to Parliament to be voted on again. If you’d like to make a submission, which can be as short or lengthy, formal or informal as you like, and you don’t have to agree with me, the closing date for submissions is February 28th 2013. A submission can be completed online by visiting Parliament’s status page for the Bill, clicking the Make a Submission link on the right hand side (it links to here), scrolling to the end of the page and following the instructions to make an online submission.

Anyway, I’ve included the text of my submission below.
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9 February, 2013
The entry restrictions of Matiu/Somes Island

My previous post criticised some aspects of closed public land, and how DoC sometimes handles it, and so I found it interesting to read a report on Tuesday of DoC rangers being verbally abused in a comparable scenario. It occurred after they instructed two divers to immediately leave the shore of Matiu/Somes Island, in the middle of Wellington Harbour, and return to sea. To be clear, this is not the type of land closure I referred to in my previous post. It happened in a Reserve rather than a National Park or Conservation Area, and the land is legally closed (except for entry under strict entry rules) for reasons appropriate for the purpose of the reserve.

The highest concern here with people landing uncontrolled on the edge of this island is a biosecurity concern for the Scientific Reserve, whereby unwanted pests could enter the island and wreak havoc amongst its local eco-systems that rely on the island’s status for their protection. Scientific Reserves are specifically set aside “for the purpose of protecting and preserving in perpetuity for scientific study, research, education, and the benefit of the country, ecological associations, plant or animal communities, types of soil, geomorphological phenomena, and like matters of special interest”. (That’s from section 21 of the Reserves Act.)
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6 February, 2013
A Brief Question: Public Land Access Rights and DoC

The introduction below was an opinion piece thefor the November 2012 Federated Mountain Clubs Bulletin. With permission I’m republishing it, plus extra content that includes legal references and various opinions of my own. Please be mindful that nothing here is legal advice. I’m trying to learn about this and be accurate from my own research but would appreciate notification of any errors so I can correct them. As always, constructive discussion is welcome.

Introduction [from Pages 40-41 of FMC Bulletin 190 (November 2012)]

No it isn’t.

We often take for granted our freedom to access public land, and over time I’ve encountered confusion about what’s meant when DoC labels places as “closed”. Some people ignore such directives, confident that reasons are often trivial and they’re not enforceable. Others would avoid a “closed” place, believing there’s likely a good reason, or through fear of being caught breaking rules.

My layperson’s reading of the law (and I welcome correction) is that it emphasises the importance of free access to public land. DoC is not automatically permitted to close access to anything except specific maintained facilities like huts and bridges. Closing access within National Parks and Conservation Areas (including Forest Parks) requires the Minister of Conservation, although the Minister has confirmed a current ongoing delegation to DoC’s Director-General, who has further delegated this authority to Area Managers and Conservators. If part of a Conservation Area is “closed” under Section 13 of the Conservation Act, DoC must advertise the closure, and entering becomes an offence with a penalty of up to a year in jail or up to a $10,000 fine. Access restrictions within National Parks require the Minister to create a bylaw, which can’t be delegated away and which must be consistent with the park’s Management Plan. A person entering could potentially be fined up to $500. Severe penalties are unlikely, but the fact that it could happen is meant to convince us to avoid “closed” places.

Despite these provisions, the law’s tone is that restricting access is serious and genuine closure of public land shouldn’t be easy, which is consistent with a view that DoC is a caretaker and not a gatekeeper. How, then, is a term which represents an offence used by DoC so frequently? Often the “closed” label is applied for discontinued maintenance, or a heightened risk for certain classes of visitors but not for everyone. It’s also commonly attached to tracks, as if they’re facilities which define where we may go rather than impressions on the land of where we have been. “Closing” a track makes little sense to someone who’d happily tread on public land alongside it, but referring to a track as “closed” may still impart to the less initiated that entry to the land beyond, or to any non-tracked land, is illegal. In most if not all cases it seems unlikely that closure is official, but with official looking signs, alerts and press releases being used by DoC to communicate about such “closures”, how can we know the difference?
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22 January, 2013
Check Out FMC Bulletin Number 190

A Track Closed sign in the Eastern
Tararua Range. Photo: Craig McGregor.

If you have access to the November 2012 copy of the Federated Mountain Clubs Bulletin Number 190, please take a look at pages 40-41 on which I have a small opinion piece.

In it, I discuss a creeping issue which I think exists with the Department of Conservation’s tendency to declare places as ‘closed’, after which it’s legally ambiguous and often misleading as to whether they’re actually closed or not. I don’t want to under-cut the FMC Bulletin’s distribution by posting it here immediately, but once it’s had a reasonable chance to get around, I’ll re-post it here with much more elaboration on the issue and the laws involved.

I’m ultimately hoping to provoke a discussion about this. As much as I enjoy people commenting on this blog, I think such a discussion would be more effective and useful via entities such as Federated Mountain Clubs, which I know reaches many more people than my blog does. Therefore, if you have something especially engaging to say and are equipped to respond in that forum, I’d like to suggest considering a response via the FMC Bulletin or a similar forum. (eg. Write the editor a letter if you’re so inclined — Shaun likes letters. 🙂 ) Otherwise please tell your friends, or comment here if you’re not so organised or aren’t affiliated enough.
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1 December, 2012