The story hasn’t made it far through the media, and most places where it’s visible show as a regurgitation of DoC’s press release pulled off the news-wire. One media organisation that investigated further was the New Zealand Herald, although the Herald’s story doesn’t offer much further information except to get a quote from a Mountain Safety Council representative who “welcomed the increase”. The article’s thin on detail about why the MSC welcomed the increase, just as it’s think on why the MSC was consulted before organisations that more directly represent use of back-country huts (as opposed to outdoor safety) such as FMC, the NZ Alpine Club the NZ Deerstalkers, or any number of local outdoor recreation clubs for that matter.

Hut fees were introduced in 1988 by the newly-founded Department of Conservation. They’ve taken time sink in, with many people early on finding it offensive for the government to effectively usurp facilities they’d helped to build, and then charge for their use. Chris MacLean’s Tararua history book quotes John Rundle during a 1991 taped conversation as follows:

“I, with a lot of other people, have put a lot of voluntary time in cutting these tracks, building these huts — which DoC hasn’t done — going on searches, instructing schools, Scouts, Girl Guides and things like that — all voluntary. For them to come and ask me for a hut fee is an insult.”

As MacLean writes, the Tararuas, which have a strong history of recreational tramping and community involvement, began with about a 25% compliance rate when hut fees were introduced. In 1989 this resulted in a long weekend helicopter blitz in which rangers were flown around many huts throughout the range to pounce on those staying there, and ensure that $4 hut fees were paid. It was bad for public relations, but apparently effective in the longer term and reportedly the $1100 use of the helicopter was cheaper than paying rangers to walk to all the remote places.

These days I’ve found it difficult to find wardens in Tararua huts. I guess either most people pay, or that the local DoC conservancies are indifferent towards enforcing it and would rather spend money elsewhere. I’ve met a volunteer warden once, at Mitre Flats about a year ago. He was a nice guy out for his own weekend tramp with a friend more than to be a warden. They had the warden’s quarters as a guaranteed room, but got the fire going before anyone else did. Next morning he wired up the warden’s radio to call in the hut’s overnight numbers and get us all a weather forecast. He reluctantly asked people to show hut tickets, which is a warden’s obligation, but decided from an unrelated conversation that I probably had an Annual Hut Pass and politely told me he wasn’t going to bother asking me to prove it. I dug it out and asked him look at it anyway, because it’s the only chance I’ve ever had to actually prove to a DoC representative that yes, I really do pay my hut fees.

To try and address some of the concerns people have, DoC also made a few concessions. A commitment was made to only use hut fee revenue specifically for maintenance and building of huts, rather than simply vanishing into DoC’s budget — it’s all in the presentation of the accounting, of course. Custodian arrangements have also been kept with many clubs, so the clubs can remain associated with certain huts, and hold a joint responsibility for their up-keep. In such cases, club members aren’t obligated to pay fees for using those huts, though I suspect many would have annual hut passes anyway.

[Edited 9-July-2010: I've added the following table and three paragraphs having heard back from DoC with some numbers]
Hut fees have always felt like token gestures to me, with the impression that they don’t come close to the costs of maintaining the hut network. I did, however, ask the Department of Conservation for more detailed numbers about maintenance of the back-country hut network compared with revenue from hut tickets and hut passes, and received limited information back from a very helpful person. For the financial year ending June 2009, DoC received the following revenue for various kinds of hut tickets not including Great Walk huts:

In the same year, as was stated in DoC’s Annual Report for the year ending June 2009, expenditure on “huts” was about $16.5m. A crucial point to note with the $16.5m expenditure figure, as was confirmed by DoC when I asked, is that it includes the cost of maintaining Great Walk huts, an amount that I was told couldn’t be separated. Great Walk huts are the five star hotels of the hut network, likely to be very expensive to maintain. Also critical when comparing the $16.5m expenditure with the $1.3m hut ticket revenue is that the user-pays part of Great Walk huts does not come from the regular back-country hut tickets and annual passes at all. It comes from a separate booking and payment system (revenue $3.9m during the same time) that’s independent from other huts.

Having subtracted Great Walk hut maintenance from the initial $16.5m figure, whatever substantial amount it may be, the $1.3m that hut tickets put towards maintenance of the rest of the hut network is likely a big proportion of maintenance, and not such a token gesture after all. If the heavily marketed tourist-frequented Great Walk huts cost $10m to maintain in that year (and let’s be clear that I’m guessing), $1.3m of hut ticket revenue makes up a good 20% of the remaining $6.5m allocated to maintaining 950-odd huts in the rest of the network for which hut ticket revenue is supposed to directly contribute.

When I first posted this before having the figures, I’d guessed that the extra money from raising hut fees wouldn’t make much difference, but now I’m not so sure. If anything though, I think it reinforces my belief that there would be much less stress on the system if all hut users actually paid for huts as they’re supposed to.

There are many people out there who don’t pay hut fees at all, both New Zealanders and tourists, and this is what annoys me about the price rise for honest people. Hut fees are an honesty system, which is not a voluntary system. Rather than the government taking a clear and visible initiative to get more of those people to pay, I feel as if I’m being made to further subsidise certain other people’s free-loading. Huts should either be fully subsidised for everyone with the addition of labour and funds as people choose to volunteer (which used to be the case), or have their costs equally shared by all users as fairly as can be managed. The current system doesn’t give the impression of doing this very well. It’s unfair to people who are honest.

Recent Federated Mountain Club Bulletins have been scattered with letters of people complaining about tourists who refuse to pay hut fees. For instance, Trish Jenner of the North Shore Tramping Club comments (Letters, FMC Bulletin 179, March 2010):

For a number of years I have noted how few pay. At one hut, New Zealanders, including us, numbered nine and every one had a ticket or annual hut pass. Foreign trampers also numbered nine but only two had bought hut tickets — a high level of non-compliance. Comments from friends suggest other tracks, for example the Dusky, support these figures.

At the Mangaturuturu Hut, an American couple camped nearby, but one of them slept in the hut, and they used the woodstove for cooking. They commented that they were “doing New Zealand on the cheap”. A French couple seemed to be playing a game of avoiding hut wardens and commented, “We are very bad tourists!”

This story is consistent with other random anecdotes I’ve heard from various people. Maybe one of the more amazing stories was of a group of tourists reportedly living in huts near road-ends for weeks on end without paying a cent, and driving out to do the grocery shopping. I’ve heard other anecdotes about tourists telling each other as they return home that the back-country hut system in New Zealand is free, and it’s completely legal and ethically okay to do this kind of thing.

One comment in a newswire feed of the recent story over at YahooXtra, from a poster claiming to live in a National Park, agrees that there’s no shortage of “hut users who have no intention of paying the NZ taxpayer for their accommodation”. Some anecdotes are extremes but there’s an underlying impression that there’s a combination of mis-information and probably intentional abuse of the system. I don’t wish to stereotype all tourists when saying this. I figure most tourists are very responsible, or at least try to be if they understand what’s expected.

It’s not just tourists to New Zealand, of course. A quick anecdotal browse of posts in the forums over at Fish & Hunt in response to this recent price rise shows that there are still New Zealanders who don’t pay fees, either because they didn’t realise they were supposed to, because they can’t be bothered, or because they refuse on principle through disliking the government for some other reason such as its use of 1080 poison for pest control.

There’s allegedly a correlation between people who avoid hut fees and people who don’t write in books, supposedly from a fear that wardens or other Department of Conservation staff must go through names in the books and correlate them with names on tickets. I can’t imagine this actually happens, but nevertheless the avoidance of writing in books is a bad thing. Avoiding writing in hut books inhibits Search and Rescue operations when it’s unclear if a missing person has been through a hut. It also gives a false impression of how frequently a hut is used, since otherwise it’s very difficult to tell. This might in turn result in the hut’s removal, or less maintenance than might be ideal.

The remoteness of back-country huts means it’s difficult to ensure that people pay fees. It’s also impractical to enforce hut fees too severely lest it put people’s lives at risk by preventing them from using huts in times of danger. In other words, putting locks on the doors would be very bad. It’s unfortunate that the honesty system results in significant proportions of people not paying for one reason or another.

Overall there are at least three groups of people who don’t pay hut fees for one reason or another:

1. Those who don’t realise they’re supposed to pay hut fees.
2. Those who forget or can’t be bothered to pay hut fees.
3. Those who refuse to pay hut fees due to some sort of principle.

Endless ideas exist for how to deal with this problem, some of which are being attempted but not completely effectively it seems. Some ideas that I like are:

• Having better signs in strategic places (DoC offices, road-ends) to make it clearer to people that they have to buy hut tickets before they leave.
• Making it easier for people to pay for hut usage in retrospect. From time to time it’s necessary to use huts without prior planning, or sometimes people just forget to buy tickets before they leave. I guess the ethical thing to do afterwards is to buy hut tickets as appropriate on returning and tear them up. There’s no formal or above-board way of doing this, however, and tearing up a ticket won’t credit it to the count of people using the specific hut as leaving a ticket stub behind would have done.
• More clearly informing tourists of what to expect when they enter the country, and working more with guide-book editors and tour agencies through which people book their trips to make it clearer to people from the beginning that they actually will have to pay. Presently the international arrival terminals present a wealth of information about what can’t be brought into the country, but very little information about what to expect and how to act.
• Giving visitors an easy opportunity to buy a hut pass as they enter the country, or even from overseas when they book their trip here, so that visits to back-country huts (except Great Walks and a few other exceptions) are pre-paid by the time they arrive, and so bookings for Great Walk huts will get the usual discounts for those with annual hut passes.
• Perhaps letting people send their fees to DoC through their phone bill, or something along those lines? The cellphone reception at most back-country huts is non-existant, and hopefully it stays that way for times to come, but even if there are ways to let people to enter a text message into their phone to be sent at a later time, and tell their phone company to transfer money to DoC, it might help to increase the payments.

I bet there are many more ideas.

The group of hut users who don’t pay on principle is unlikely to be swayed by any of these ideas. Probably the only things that can be done in some cases is either to accept it, to change the rules (eg. perhaps formally recognise people’s use of facilities is in exchange for their up-keep of the facilities), cater to people’s principles where it’s feasible to do so, or bring in more enforcement. It’s hard to say which (if any) of these is a good idea. They all have down sides. Still, I think if DoC’s going to progressively raise the hut fee prices for those who are honest, there’s a need to more heavily address the problems with other people not paying at all. Otherwise it’s an unfair system.

Even if the appeal is turned down, the Minister of Conservation (Kate Wilkinson) still has to finally approve Meridian’s plans to dam the river because it happens to be on conservation land, and she would have to do so in the face of her main advising department giving strong advice about how bad-an-idea they think it is. On the other hand, Kate Wilkinson ordered a review into the advocacy role of her department a couple of months ago.

Anyway, enough of this, politics is boring. I’m going tramping this weekend, or possibly swimming depending on how things go.

Recent proposals by the current government to open up parts of schedule 4 land is is largely with mining interests in mind, and it probably has something to do with the spike in certain mineral values, such as Gold, in the last few years. It seems likely that such mining will actually go ahead sooner or later if certain targeted land is removed from Schedule 4. A variety of conservation, recreation and political groups (notably Forest and Bird, and Federated Mountain Clubs — the latter of which represents most tramping and outdoor clubs in New Zealand) have come out very strongly against the proposal, centred around a campaign titled 2precious2mine.

A Forest & Bird bus stop advertisement, corner
of Bowen Street and The Terrace (Wellington).

The Ministry of Economic Development is driving the push to open up parts of schedule 4, and (eventually) released a discussion paper after months of unclear speculation about exactly what was being considered. Public submissions on the document close at 5pm on Tuesday 4th May Wednesday 26th May (Update 13-5-2010: It’s been extended). Despite my feelings that a submission from myself would not make a real difference, I figured I’d feel much worse if I did nothing. At the very least, I suppose I can contribute to the count of people who cared enough about it add to the flood, and collectively that might help to demonstrate something. I visited the Submissions Page earlier this evening and made an online submission, which I’ve included the text of below.

If you feel strongly about Schedule 4 (even if you disagree with me), please go and make your own submission, even if it’s just a short one. It’s not too difficult, and don’t feel compelled to stick to the structure that the Ministry of Economic Development is trying to encourage if it doesn’t fit what you want to say.

I structured my submission to the Ministry’s web form, but didn’t bother to answer a few of the questions (such as the one asking what sort of stock-take information it’d be useful for the government to collect on behalf of mining companies). I’ve thrown this response together more or less on a whim, and it may not be the same as it might have been if I’d sat on it for a few days. It wasn’t the sort of thing I wanted hanging around in my head, though.

Q1 On the areas proposed for removal from Schedule 4: Section 7 of the discussion paper sets out the areas proposed for removal from Schedule 4. Do you think these areas should be removed from Schedule 4 so that applications for exploration and mining activity can be considered on a case-by-case basis? Yes or No? And why? (Your response may be in relation to any one or more of the areas discussed. Please clearly identify the area(s) to which your response relates.)

My response: Doubtless there will be many submissions that cover the specific conservation values of the specific areas being proposed for removal. I’m not well qualified to comment on specific conservation values, and could only repeat what’s already likely to be said.

What concerns me is that areas should be able to be removed from Schedule 4 at all. Schedule 4 was designed to rule out mineral exploration applications in certain places specifically because those places were deemed important to conservation values. Land should not be allowed to be removed without extraordinary cause and without very credible arguments as to why the original decision to include them in Schedule 4 is no longer relevant.

The question of mining potential of land in schedule 4 should not be a consideration, unless mining operators can prove they will have zero significant impact on the values for which an area was included, and any additional values that have become relevant or known since it was included.

Q2 On the areas proposed for addition to Schedule 4: Section 8 of the discussion paper sets out the areas proposed for addition to Schedule 4. Do you agree with the proposal to add these areas to Schedule 4? Yes or No? And why? (Your response may be in relation to any one or more of the areas discussed. Please clearly identify the area(s) to which your response relates.)

My response: I’m sure the proposed areas can be considered on their merits using the same standards that have been used previously, and I think this is what should happen.

My only comment here is that new additions should not be considered an exchange for areas being removed. Areas should be added on their merits, and only removed in extraordinary cases if their respective conservation values change such that those merits are no longer relevant.

Q3 On the assessment of areas: The assessment of areas covered by Schedule 4 and those proposed for addition is outlined in sections 7 and 8 of this document and Appendices 1 and 2.

(a) What are your views on the assessment of the various values (conservation, cultural, tourism and recreation, mineral, other) of the land areas discussed?

My response: I’m concerned about the numerical values being considered with respect to the value of minerals.

The discussion document makes frequent mention of possible mineral volumes, but habitually states monetary values either “at today’s prices” (sections 7.1, 7.2 and 7.3) or similar (section 2.2). Despite pointing out that several years will pass before significant amounts of minerals can be extracted, the document does not make clear, or even appear to acknowledge, that mineral prices fluctuate by large amounts on the international market over long periods of time, and that “today’s prices” happen to be at an all time high that will probably not persist. The 2010 price for gold is roughly 4 times the value of gold between 1998 and 2002, and about 3 times the value of gold through most of the 1980s and until the late 1990s.

Presumably the recent spike in mineral values is why there’s a sudden interest in accessing what minerals might be inaccessible due to schedule 4, but I think great care and consideration needs to be taken to consider if the relevant minerals will retain this value, or anything remotely near it, during the amount of time it will take to extract and sell them.

Q5 On a new contestable conservation fund: Section 9 describes a proposed contestable conservation fund the Government proposes to establish, which would be made up of a percentage of the money the Crown receives from minerals (except petroleum) from public conservation areas.

(a) A broad objective, to enhance conservation outcomes for New Zealand, is proposed for the fund. Do you agree with the proposed objective?

My response: Not in principle. Having such a fund for conservation is better than not having such a fund, however:

The disturbing and contradicting thing I see about this fund is that it’s an acknowledgement that conservation values *are* being compromised by mining, and these conservation values are the ones currently protected by schedule 4 for specific reasons. If the funding of conservation efforts elsewhere are worth the loss of conservation values protected by schedule 4, then surely those efforts should already be being treated with very high regard already, and be getting sufficient funding from other sources.

The assertion in the discussion document that such a fund will not impact on money that DOC receives for its conservation work seems confusing. DOC will receive money based on what it’s applied for according to what it believes is necessary, and these necessities will be adjusted or re-prioritised accordingly (possibly resulting on less money being allocated) if another organisation or voluntary efforts are already using the fund to carry out work that DOC would otherwise be doing. Ultimately it’s completely possible that DOC will get less money for conservation work, and the combined amount of money for conservation work (including the contestable fund) will be similar.

(b) What do you think the fund should be used for? What should its priorities be?

My response: Fostering New Zealanders’ understanding of conservation of remote areas beyond scenic beauty in computer desktop wallpapers.

Encouraging and getting New Zealanders outdoors into some of New Zealand’s remote places to experience conservation values, especially from demographics and communities of people who traditionally don’t see them, and to build systems that ensure people remain involved and encourage others in their communities. eg. Recent immigrants with English as a second language who might be interested in visiting the outdoors but not know how to get started, people who are generally restricted to cities due to travel costs, and so on.

ie. Give people an opportunity to appreciate and understand what’s out there, and to be able to enjoy it.

(c) An independent panel appointed by the Minister of Energy and Resources and the Minister of Conservation is proposed to run the fund. Do you think this is a good idea?

It would depend on how open and objective the appointment is, how governed it is by process and qualifications rather than whims, opinions and friends of a Minister, how likely it is that the Ministers would follow that process, and the likeliness that meaningful consequences for Ministers would be imposed if and when this didn’t happen.

(d) It is proposed that half of royalties from public conservation areas are contributed to the fund, with a minimum of $2 million per year for the first four years, and a maximum of $10 million per year. Do you think the amounts proposed for the fund are appropriate?

No. Why should it be restricted to $10 million if it were to go higher? If mining companies are paying that many royalties for extracting minerals, the conservation estate which ultimately pays for it should, in some form, get an even cut.

The decision was majority rather than unanimous, with two of the three commissioners (John Lumsden and Terry Archer) finding in favour of the consents, but the other commissioner (Greg Ryder) considering “that the effects of the proposal on the ecology of the Mokihinui catchment were not only adverse but could not be satisfactorily mitigated”. Their full decisions can be read from page 296 of part one of the document linked from above.

It is very likely that this decision will be appealed before anything happens. The New Zealand Wild Rivers campaign more or less echoes my thoughts on this.

A media report from The Press is here.

A couple of weeks ago, I took part in a bulk order of the new Topo50 maps, which replace the old 260 series that’s been in publication for several decades until now. I’m now the owner of 18 Topo50 maps to get me started, having picked up most of them for $3.50 each, around half the usual retail price. You can get this price (which includes GST but not postage) if you have a bulk order or 20 or more maps direct from LINZ, which makes it useful for clubs or groups of friends who know in advance what they want. I wrote about these maps last year, including more detail about why it’s actually happening and what the main changes are. The new maps have a couple of obvious differences:

• They’re smaller. All maps are now metric A1 size. This means they fit less information, but they should also fit more nicely into other equipment that takes metric paper sizes such as photocopiers and satchels. Smaller maps also means less to carry, unless you happen to be crossing map boundaries (which is more likely). Another side effect is that the boundaries between maps have shifted all over the place. Some areas fit more nicely into the Topo50 map boundaries, whereas others definitely don’t.
• The map grid has changed, which means all reference coordinates have changed. This is the most important reason why LINZ wants people to start using new maps, so as to reduce confusion between the old and new map grids.

Strictly speaking it’s no longer necessary to buy the maps at all. LINZ now makes them downloadable, letting people with adequate facilities print their own and mix and match the parts they want. Personally I still prefer to go with the standard pre-printed maps, mostly because I trust the consistency of production, with an idea of how the paper and toner will last, knowing that every map will have coordinates properly produced, and so on.

I possibly haven’t broken these regions into the same segments that everyone else would have, but a few notes about the various regions are:

Wellington Old maps: R27, R28 & Pt. Q27 (Wellington), R26 & Pt. R25 (Paraparaumu). New maps: BQ31 (Wellington), BQ32 (Lower Hutt), BP32 (Paraparaumu) for the northern-most part.

In the 260 series, the bulk of the Wellington region used to exist on a single map titled “R27, R28 & Pt. Q27“, of which R27 was the main component and the other two parts were tacked on to two different edges making it an unusually large 260 map. Further north up to Waikanae, including Kapiti Island was on another spliced-together map. These inconsistent sizes splattered around the system were one of the things making the 260 series more expensive to produce. The Wellington map contained all of Te Kopohau Reserve, Makara and the coast up to Porirua, all of Belmont Regional Park, everything around the Hutt Valley and the bulk of the Orongorongos and Rimutaka Range as far as the south coast, with a tiny part of the southern Wairarapa on the edge (really only Lake Oneke). The northern map (which I’ve rarely used) contained Kapiti Island, most of the Akatarawas, and a slight fringe of the Tararuas east of the Akatarawa Road between Upper Hutt and Waikanae.

In the Topo50 series, the same region now crosses three main maps. Map BQ31 (Wellington) covers all of Wellington out to the Cook Straight on the south and west, but only extends north to about Tawa (not as far as Porirua) and east-wards doesn’t quite reach Petone. Pencarrow Head juts into the eastern edge of the map, but apart from this none of the Eastbourne side of Wellington Harbour reaches this map. All of Lower Hutt and the bulk of the Orongorongos and Rimutaka Range is drawn on map BQ32 (Lower Hutt), although without as much to the north. The eastern edge of this map is roughly the same as the old 260 Wellington map, just reaching Lake Oneke. Everything north of Tawa, and still reaching about the same fringe of the Tararuas, is now on BP32 (Paraparaumu). Most of Kapiti Island appears on this map, but the north end with Waiorua Bay is chopped off. If you specifically care about the north end of Kapiti Island, it’s worth noting that Topo50 map BN32ptBP32 has been intentionally shifted south to overlap, and includes all of Kapiti Island. (I don’t own this map.)

Tararuas Old maps: S26 (Carterton) for the southern end, S25 (Levin) for the northern end. New maps: BP33 (Featherston), BP34 (Masterton), BN33 (Levin), BN34 (Shannon).

I think the Tararuas lost out with the new map divisions. In the 260 series nearly the entire range was nicely covered by two maps, but now there’s a mixture of mountain range, flat farms and populated towns and coastal areas. I was going to take my new maps into the Tararuas last weekend, but took the old ones instead when I realised our stint on the middle part of the main range was going to cross three different maps. The route just fitted the old maps so much more nicely.

All of the Southern Crossing region fits into BP33 (Featherston), which also seems to be the most filled-up of these maps as far as tramping regions go. It also includes the Southern Main Range right up to Anderson, and (nearly) all of the route down to Waitewaewae Hut. The map extends north to Otaki Forks and Waitewaewae Hut, about the same line as the old map. It’s the east-west split where things get annoying, as the Featherston map only extends as far east as Mt Holdsworth and much of the Totara Creek track. If you want a map that includes places like Holdsworth Lodge, Mountain House and Powell Hut, you’ll also need to get map BP34 (Masterton), which is mostly farm-land but includes this corner of the Tararuas and also the Barra Track up to Mitre Flats (but not Mitre). That whole area falls into a frustrating network of map boundaries. If you wanted to head further north to somewhere like Cow Creek, or up over Three Kings or Mitre on the tops, you’d find yourself getting onto yet another map, BN34 (Shannon).

Much of the northern end of the Tararuas falls on map BN34 (Shannon). The souther end of this map falls a little further south than the Kiriwhakapapa Shelter and North King. The Shannon map includes pretty much all of the Northern Main Range, north-west of Arete and past Dundas, down past Herepai Hut or onward into the leatherwood-laden hell-hole towards the Mangahao Dams. West of Arete, it’s necessary to switch to map BN33 (Levin), which includes most of Carkeek and Dorset Ridges on the far east, most of the middle Main Range, and Oriwa Ridge.

Ruahines Old maps: T23 (Kimbolton), U23 (Dannevirke), T22 (Mangaweka), U22 (Ongaonga), U21 (Kereru). New maps: BL36 (Norsewood), BK36 (Taoroa Junction), BK37 (Tikokino).

I haven’t really visited enough of the Ruahines to know where all the best bits are, but at face value I think the area’s done much better for map boundaries in Topo50 than it did in the 260 series. The Ruahines are long and thin (especially at the southern end), and trend diagonally up the North Island, at least compared with the map sheet indeces. In the 260 series, the range crossed at least 5 maps, possibly more, but often only cutting corners or scraping edges of the maps. For instance, the walk into Heritage Lodge or Rangiwahia Hut occurs on the far east of map T22 (Mangaweka) — a map which is almost entirely farmland irrelevant to the range. Further east, the bulk of the Ruahine Range at that latitude falls onto U22 (Ongaonga), but still only uses 1/3 of the map surface. Further south, most of the range fell diagonally across T23 (Kimbolton), but just cuts the corner of U23 (Dannevirke), and that could have been annoying for anyone wanting to walk across to any of the 6 huts marked on that tiny corner of the Dannevirke map. Towards the northern end, map U21 (Kereru) was actually reasonably full of Ruahine Range area.

The reason I think the Ruahines win so much under Topo50 is because the west and east map boundaries are placed to fit the full width of the range so much more nicely than in the old maps. About the same area for which I needed 5 large maps with lots of farmland is now covered by 3 smaller maps of mostly mountain range. The thinner parts of the range around Rangiwahia, Heritage and further south now have the entire width of the range falling within a single map — in this case BL36 (Norsewood). The two maps further north and north-east, BK36 (Taoroa Junction) and BK37 (Tikokino) cover the whole area up the Ruahine Main Range, and out to the edges on both sides without huge amounts of extra.

Aorangis Old map: S28 (Palliser). New maps: BQ33 (Lake Wairarapa), BR33 (Ngawi).

The Aorangi Range, mostly a hunter’s playground on the south-east coast of the North Island, used to be entirely on one map. I guess there’s a slight loss here because it’s now mostly on two. The southern border of map BQ33 falls just south of the Putangirua Pinnacles, which is a starting point for a trip I’ve now done twice, to walk south from there out to Cape Palliser. Both maps have a lot of wasted space outside the mountain range, but at least the whole range does seem to be covered on just two maps, though, and it doesn’t get more complex.

Mt Taranaki / Egmont Old maps: P20 (Egmont), plus a few extras around the edges. New maps: BJ29 (Mount Taranaki or Mount Egmont), BH29 (New Plymouth).

Most of Mt Taranaki/Egmont used to fit on P20 (Egmont), with the exception of a couple of edges of the national park falling onto P19 (New Plymouth) or Q20 (Stratford). The design of Egmont National Park, I think, means that those two edge maps often wouldn’t have been relevant anyway, simply because they mostly involve just the beginning of well define tracks up to the mountain in the middle, and also because the Park has several roads leading up to the inner section in which many people start their activities regardless. Consequently it was often possible to get by in all of Egmont with a single map.

In the Topo50 maps, I think the boundaries become slightly less efficient. There is still a single map, BJ29 (Mount Taranaki or Mount Egmont) that covers the central cone of the mountain. Most of the national park is restricted to the north-west corner of this map, however, and the entirety of the Pouakai Range to the north east has been cut off. To get the park in its entirety, it’d be necessary to obtain three more maps: BJ28 (Opunake), BH29 (New Plymouth) and possibly BH28 (Oakura). I don’t own any of these, but might get them in the next bulk order I take part in.

I have a few other maps scattered around, but this covers the main Wellington-based regions I tend to spend most time tramping in. If you’d like a look at the boundaries for yourself without leaving the internet, LINZ has published map sheet guides for the new map series, including comparisons between where the old sheets and new sheets lie. My current favourite way to check out the Topo50 map extents online, however, is to visit Koordinates.com and search for “Topo50″, switch on the Topo50 map layer, zoom around to find what I want, then toggle the Topo50 sheet index layer to see which map it’s on.

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, and also Kerry L at Kayak & Kayaking.

I can’t comment with authority about whether these kayakers were being irresponsible. Rescuers claim it was irresponsible, but the kayakers were supposedly experienced and capable of making their own decisions based on knowledge about their abilities. From the description (and I’m not going on first-hand information) it sounds as if the kayakers perhaps could have gotten themselves out of the situation and were perhaps busy figuring this out, but accepted a helicopter ride because it showed up. Supposedly the two were “very happy” to have the helicopter available, but it seems probable that they weren’t informed at the time that the rescue was going to cost them anything. Within New Zealand, it would be a reasonable assumption in a compromising situation that any rescue helicopter on offer is free, particularly if it’s obviously been sent to search for you without having been requested, and even if you’re not in absolute dire trouble. On the other side (as has been pointed out by the harbourmaster), they can’t ignore the sign of an empty kayak floating down a flooded river.

The question of fault isn’t the most important here, though. I’m uncomfortable with how they were sent a bill at all, and are now being threatened with court action. Typically within New Zealand, search and rescue operations are not charged back to those being rescued. After the event, things are assessed and costs are either underwritten by ACC or by the New Zealand Police. If the national search and rescue coordination services are notified (by emergency beacons or otherwise), the service is legally obligated to follow up the notice and respond as appropriate, and cannot legally ask for payment. These legal obligations will not prevent the Police and/or SAR from issuing noisy press releases shouting “stupid idiot trampers” or (in this case) “stupid idiot kayakers”, and in excessive cases such as people being very obviously stupid or wasting police time, the police can choose to prosecute a person in court for wasting time and resources. But a person can’t be charged up-front, and this ensures a situation where people aren’t considering silly and irrelevant details about affordability of requesting a rescue when their life is in danger. It also supports a situation where people are comfortable donating vast voluntary resources (time, money and experience and leave from their regular work) without feeling so much as if they’re being ripped off by a system where the victim pays someone but not them.

There’s an ongoing debate in New Zealand about whether people should pay for rescues, whether there should be a requirement for tourists and/or back-country users to sign up to some kind of insurance scheme, and perhaps it has merit. New Zealand isn’t the only place with this debate, either. For example, the Spanish province of Catalonia decided to start charging particularly reckless people late last year, citing hourly rates of helicopters and people required during the search and rescue. There’s also a Facebook page campaigning for free SAR operations throughout the USA. What bothers me in the apparent New Zealand situation is the inconsistency of there being a general policy of rescues being at no charge, but still having some invoices issued depending entirely on the circumstances of the rescuers — not the rescued. Even if this bill can’t be enforced, sending it through the courts creates uncertainty that could create doubt in people’s minds about requesting a rescue when they really need it.

It’s understandable that the Queenstown Lakes District Council felt obligated to launch a helicopter, did so independently for expedience, and their budget will be limited, which is why the harbourmaster wants to recover the costs somehow. The possibility that rescuers could show up to help a person in trouble, and that person might not know whether the search will cost or not, is concerning, because unless all rescues are free of charge, it compromises the reason for other searches being free of charge. The more often this happens, the more often people will think twice about accepting an offer of rescue when they genuinely need it. I like to think that if and when I’m rescued after a back-country mistake, I’d make an effort to donate at least the cost of my rescue as long as it’s within my means. In this case it was $4,000, and such a cost could be manageable for people good at managing their money (which a significant number of people in New Zealand are awful at, by the way). If it happened to be a $40,000 invoice, which wouldn’t necessarily include the time, resources and expense put in by any number of volunteers, it would be completely unaffordable for most. The consequences of telling local authorities that they can’t send invoices, however, might make them less likely to respond to potential emergency situations when it makes sense for them to do so.

As long as search and rescue is generally designed to be at no cost for rescued parties, perhaps it would be useful for systems to be adjusted so that local authorities conducting rescues could more easily tie into the national framework. In this case, for instance, the Queenstown Lakes District Council would not attempt to charge the rescuers, but would instead apply back to the Police or ACC to have the bill paid out of pre-existing budgets that can absorb it more easily, on the grounds that they made a decision to investigate the likely possibility of a person in imminent danger. Otherwise I think we may as well go the full distance and make it clear that people need to pay, or take out insurance, or whatever.

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.

It ruffled feathers and caused stress for people on both sides early on. Oriwa Ridge is within one of two Remote Wilderness Areas in the Tararuas — special areas set aside to receive little or no development. This is so experienced people really can get into the wilderness without having to run into tracks, huts, helicopters, and too many other people. Despite having been a popular route many decades ago, Oriwa Ridge itself has a reputation (deserved or not) of being a remote ridge to walk along thanks to a famous storm in the 1930s that left behind lots of tree-fall, causing the ridge to be a comparably challenging, but rewarding route for people who enjoy getting out to that sort of place. The Te Araroa Trail proposal would have ploughed a more heavily walked track along the ridge, which contradicts the idea of a remote wilderness zone and (being on the ridge itself) would have made it difficult for people visiting the region to avoid.

When the Department of Conservation eventually requested submissions on the Oriwa Ridge idea back in August, it triggered debate amongst many of the locals who visit the Tararuas. The Te Araroa Trust encouraged its supporters to make submissions in favour of its proposed route. At the same time, however, several of the local tramping clubs approached the Federated Mountain Clubs of New Zealand, which made a strong submission against the proposal.

In some ways it’s a shame that so much time and effort has been spent both by people in the trust, in DOC, and other interested parties, certainly with much stress along the way, to effectively arrive at the conclusion that the initial idea was always the best. I suppose at least it’s been thought through in a lot of detail now, however, and hopefully everyone can at least see there’s been reasoned consideration.

Perhaps the last word is that anyone who still wants to walk along Oriwa Ridge, as part of their own Te Araroa route or not, can continue to do so. I’ve never been there, but I intend to see it sooner or later. Unlike many countries, there’s no legal requirement to fill in any forms or pay any admissions, or stay on any marked track. All that’s required is to leave it as you find it, and to be fully responsible for yourself. Once these things are accounted for, Oriwa Ridge and nearly anywhere in New Zealand’s back-country is there to be visited in a relatively un-touched state. It’s one of the beauties of our public estate which I hope I’ll never take for granted.

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.

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.

Slow boats like this are a common
sight in Laos on the Mekong River.

Our holiday didn’t involve much walking or tramping or hiking, apart from the odd three hour staged walk to a waterfall here and there. From what I saw there was a lot of potential scope for tramping around Laos, but it’s not really an angle being pushed by anyone there, as far as I can tell. I asked someone about such possibilities as we spent a couple of days floating down the Mekong River, but I had to repeat and re-phrase the question a couple of times because he didn’t understand the concept of what I was talking about. Walking around in the wilderness for recreation doesn’t make a lot of sense in a place where people already do this as part of their lives. In particular, certain nomadic people live along the banks of the Mekong River, re-locating their settlements as the months go on to wherever it’s appropriate for them to farm and grow what they need, prior to packing up and moving somewhere else so the land can re-generate.

Local people in Laos have far more to worry about than enjoying the wilderness. When you already live in it, it’s everywhere, and you have to think about day-to-day living, recognition of the wilderness as something for leisure or preservation takes a back seat. I’m sure there are parallels here with early colonisation of New Zealand. When the first people arrived 1000 years ago, massive amounts of forest were burned off to make way for humans to live. There was so much of it, after all, and New Zealand bush does tend to be impenetrable on average in its natural state. The pattern was repeated 200 years ago when European settlers arrived, fresh with new farming techniques and newly-developed technology that could be used to turn nearly all of the country’s native wetlands into valuable farm-land, giant thousand year old trees were felled all over for short term gain, birds became extinct and other birds became severely endangered as their habitat was destroyed. Ecologically it was a tremendous disaster, and I’ve often wished for the chance to see New Zealand as it might have been before humans messed it up so much, but these also established a stable economy for settlers who needed to live and sustain themselves in a new land.

Things change over time. Life becomes more comfortable, people get more luxuries and discover ways to live reasonably without spending every waking hour at work. People have leisure time, and they begin to appreciate things around them more, perhaps having reason to notice what’s around them, and see reasons to preserve and protect it rather than unsustainably suck it dry. Throughout the 20th century, New Zealanders established a culture that involved more leisure, getting outdoors and enjoying the environment of their country, whether by exploring the mountains, tramping, climbing, or just by getting out to the campgrounds or having barbecues on the beach. I suppose I’m fortunate to live in New Zealand now and not before — it’s undoubtedly a different world.

This is something that doesn’t really exist to the same extent in a place like Laos, at least as far as I can tell. Despite people having lived in Laos (and all of South East Asia) for a very long time, the history means that absolute preservation of the complete environment as it exists today isn’t necessarily at the top of the priority list. People have far more to worry about than preserving every piece of scenery, as Laos is a country that needs to attract more money to help people to improve their way of life. I guess this is where the mineral part of the story comes in, because the other major place besides tourism where Laos is searching for income happens to be mining.

Laos has minerals — it’s uncertain exactly what minerals are there, but it’s believed there’s quite a lot of mineral wealth buried underground. There aren’t many people in Laos with the skills to search for minerals, or get them out, so the present plan has been to involve large international mining companies, especially some of the big Australian mining companies, and give them a cut of the proceeds as part of the deal. The hopeful end result is that local people will be trained up, and over time the country will become more equipped to extract its minerals on its own.

Recently in New Zealand, there has been much controversy just on the mention that the government wants to look at the conservation estate to get a stock-take of what minerals exist and where they are. This is without even explicitly saying that anything will or might be mined, but the concern has been more about what went un-said, and later Official Information Act requests discovered that Gerry Brownlee (Minister for Economic Development) already knew that he wanted to look at opening parts of places like Fiordland, the Kahurangis and Paparoa national parks for mining operations. Mining companies claim this criticism is unjustified and their footprints are minimal, and to many people this will be completely true because obviously people have different opinions on what’s acceptable depending on how important they see things.

I think the outcry is a reflection of the culture I mentioned earlier that New Zealand has built over the past century, with so many people seeing their outdoor environment as a critically important part of their lives that shouldn’t be messed with. If it really were just a stock-take, I’d think it was awesome. Coming from a relatively scientific background, I see it as a great thing to be learning as much about everything as possible. Under normal circumstances, criticising the government for simply wanting to discover more about our environment would seem bizarre, but in this case I sympathise with those who were quick to jump the gun and assume the worst. It’s unlikely that clear details for people to argue over the specifics of will be released for some time, but it seems there’s good reason for concern. I’m also very concerned.

It’s strange having just returned from a place like Laos which is also considering mining of its natural resources, because in Laos my opinion about mining might as well be a polar opposite. It’s possible that the limited amount of what I saw has skewed my opinion, but it at least seems as if mining in Laos seems will have a much more definite and positive effect on the quality of life for the people who live there, as long as it’s done carefully and with consideration about where the money goes.

Some of the 700 monks in Luang Prabang go
about the morning ritual of collecting offerings of
sticky rice from the local populace.

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.

I’m generally skeptical of petitions for various reasons including how they’re sometimes used to claim and campaign for things that don’t match the wording under which people signed. Even in this case I’m still unsure whether I agree with the exact wording. I put my name against the first petition after some days of thought and the lengthy consideration, however, mostly because I think it’s a great issue to actually be discussed.

Restaurant and cafe owners on the main strip probably wouldn’t support such a bylaw, since (as proposed) it’d make it illegal for them to cater to smoking customers when it might not be so for competitors just around a corner. I’m also not personally certain a complete ban on smoking is the best answer, despite liking the idea of strongly encouraging and better facilitating people who want to smoke to give better consideration to those around them without alienating smokers into a reject hole.

Ultimately, I’m simply glad that this issue is being brought up and seems to be arousing interest in the community. Irrespective of whether new by-laws are needed, or just better facilities for and communication about the problems, it needs to be discussed out loud. Presently, I sometimes feel as if I can only get a breath of fresh air by stick my head into the middle of the road because today’s cars seem so much cleaner than today’s cigarettes (albeit not a scientifically-derived assertion on my part). Some people would probably say I’m just overly sensitive, but I don’t think I’m too far out of line to feel a little miffed at the current state of things. I’ll be keen to see what kind of discussions and viewpoints come out of this.

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.

For a long time now, LINZ has produced both the NZMS260 and NZMS262 series’ of maps, the former of which is used extensively for tramping. These maps are about as official as it’s possible to get for topographic maps of New Zealand. It’s taken decades to produce the entire series, with each map having been manually drawn. As the series of maps has been produced over such a long time, some maps don’t even match properly with neighbouring maps in properties such as colouring, especially if the maps were produced at different times. A few years ago, LINZ announced that as a major project, the map system would be changing and the various coordinate systems associated with New Zealand mapping would change with it.

There are a variety of reasons why it makes sense for LINZ to update the mapping system, but the most important is to make it work more nicely with the alternative “Geodetic Datum” that LINZ decided to adopt a few years ago. To understand why on earth this was necessary at all, let alone what a “Geodetic Datum” actually is and why LINZ cares about it, it’s necessary to understand something about how maps work and how they’re put together.

It’s all about projections

If you’ve dealt with maps before, you’ve probably heard something about map projections. A “projection” is the necessarily imperfect answer to the problem of how to represent the curved surface on a flat piece of paper.

Each of the maps in the NZMS260 series, the NZMS262 series, and probably most other series’ that LINZ publishes, is drawn on a flat sheet of paper, but the land that it represents isn’t flat. What it comes down to is that a flat map is not a perfect representation of the land it represents, and it can’t be. If every map in the series were laid side by side, the combined land area would look very skewed, and if the maps were pushed around to make the land appear closer to the correct shape, they would no longer line up properly side by side, and all of the nice, parallel lines of the overlaid map grid would no longer be parallel. In practice, the Earth is so large that the area represented by a single map is almost flat, and for most common uses (such as trampers taking compass bearings), it’s easily good enough for the job.

This is what a projection is. To ensure that the map can be displayed most usefully in a flat context, LINZ has to skew the shape of the entire country both so it’s not quite correct, and so it’s as un-obvious as possible that it’s not quite correct.

Points of reference and coordinates

Until recently, I’d intuitively assumed that things like latitude and longitude were very easy concepts. ie. With a specific coordinate, just draw a line from the centre of the Earth in whatever direction some brilliant maths indicates, and the geographic point for a given latitude and longitude will be where that line intersects the Earth’s surface. The intuition falls apart once it’s realise that to do this, just for starters, some way is needed for deciding where the centre of the Earth is. It falls apart even further when it’s realised that the Earth isn’t a perfect sphere, or even a sphere with mountains and valleys messing up the surface. It’s actually an oblique spheroid, which means it’s a flattened sphere that’s much wider in the middle than at the poles. The simplicity of projecting lines from the centre is getting less simple all the time.

You don’t necessarily need to know the centre of the Earth to draw a decent map that’s a good representation of an area, but you need reliable points of reference for which you do know the latitudes and longitudes already. The reference points can’t move, because if they do then it means you can no longer be certain about every measurement you’ve taken from them. New Zealand is a geologically active place, where the land moves around, and this is essentially the problem with the old NZGD1949 Geodetic Datum on which the existing LINZ topo maps have been based until now.

Geodetic datums define the reference system

This is where we come back to geodetic datums, because a datum is essentially the reference system on which everything is based. It might be something derived from the centre of the Earth, or it might be something else. It’s essential that it’s reliable and well understood, however, or everything derived from it becomes confused.

NZGD1949 is what’s known as a “local horizontal datum”, and also a “static datum”. It’s a reference system based on the known positions of trig stations around New Zealand that have been measured very accurately, and it also assumes that they never move. This isn’t exactly true, and the way the datum works makes it more difficult for surveyors to model geological movement without a lot of effort. Therefore this kind of system is not sufficient for use in New Zealand for some of today’s needs, because it’s not a reliable reference to the level of accuracy those needs require. Another issue with NZGD1949 is that having been designed to only fit New Zealand’s land-shape and nothing else, it’s not naturally compatible with much of the globally-aware navigation technology available today, notably GPS systems. To work with NZGD1949 and systems based upon it such as the New Zealand Map Grid, such technology has to incorporate lots of conversions. Through doing so, they waste resources and lose accuracy.

NZGD2000, the new Geodetic Datum which LINZ internally adopted in 1998 (but didn’t immediately use publicly in place of the NZMS260 or NZMS262 series’ of maps), is known as a “geocentric three dimensional datum”, and a “semi-dynamic datum”. It’s a referencing system based on a particular definition of the centre of the Earth and it’s been designed from knowledge that takes the whole planet into account. It’s designed around a model that estimates the shape of the entire Earth well beyond just New Zealand. Obviously the use of NZGD2000 doesn’t prevent New Zealand’s land-mass from morphing by about 5 cm relative to itself each year, but through its design it does help the surveyors and geographers at LINZ keep track of what’s actually moving around in New Zealand much more accurately. Otherwise it’s like trying to measure a distance while someone’s pulling the carpet out from underneath you. Also, being a globally-defined datum, it’s much more easily compatible with the GPS network, which operates in that context.

Collateral damage to coordinate systems

Being naive about the topic as I am, it hadn’t occurred to me until I learned of these changes is that latitudes and longitudes, which I’d always assumed were absolute everywhere, are really only subjective to the system used to plot them and that the systems vary in different places. When LINZ switches its maps to use NZGD2000, all places in New Zealand will be assigned a new latitude and longitude, as far as the predominant series of maps are concerned. Effectively, if you were to go to a specific position of latitude and longitude according to an old map and then again according to a new map, it will be as if New Zealand has shifted about 190 metres north and 10 metres east. (Check out the Differences section of the LINZ FAQ for more information about this.) What’s really happening, of course, is that those latitude and longitude lines are slightly offset from where they used to be because New Zealand is properly aligning itself with the same reference point used by much of the rest of the world.

The New Zealand Map Grid (NZMG) will also disappear, to be replaced by a new grid called the New Zealand Transverse Mercator projection (NZTM2000). This happens for the same reason, because the old NZMG was projected onto New Zealand using systems derived from the old NZGD1949 reference system. With NZTM2000, drawing the old map grid doesn’t quite work any more.

Even though LINZ has been doing its surveying using the new NZTM2000 for more than a decade now, it’s certainly possible to hack together maps with the old grids on them and use the old numbers and draw the old lines. In fact, this is what’s been happening over the past decade. During all this time LINZ has still released newly surveyed editions of their NZMS260 and NZMS262 topo maps with all the internally surveyed new coordinates converted back to the old coordinates for publication. This has been so that the new maps would be compatible with those already in circulation, giving LINZ more time to prepare for the change-over which is now here. Ultimately though, this is inefficient and leads to more and more complications and maintenance problems. Sooner or later, it all has to change.

Change happens on 29th 23rd September 2009

On 29th September 2009 (edit: 23rd September 2009), LINZ will finally release its new series of maps into shops. The old NZMS260 and NZMS262 series’ of maps are no longer being produced, and they’ll be completely withdrawn on that date. At the same time, the complete series of all Topo50 and Topo250 maps will be released, and LINZ is taking the opportunity to make several additional changes to the production system of its maps. Notably,

• The standard printed size of map sheets will become smaller and more consistent. In the NZMS260 and NZMS262 series’, maps were printed on a non-standard, and very large, sized sheet. Some maps were even sized inconsistently with their neighbouring maps, especially if a small segment of land existed off to the side, and making an existing map slightly wider would remove the need to print a new map of mostly water. With the new Topo50 and Topo250 map series’, all map sheets will be produced as metric A1 size. In cases where a map will only have tiny amount of land to be nearly useless for land navigation, LINZ will overlap the maps with neighbouring maps to ensure that every map displays a useful amount of land. Therefore some land may be duplicated on multiple maps, but will also do away with maps that are 95% water.
• Maps will be cheaper. LINZ really wants to encourage people to switch to the new Topo50 and Topo250 maps as soon as possible. Part of this encouragement is to make them available to anyone at the wholesale price of $3.50, as long as 20 or more maps are purchased. (ie. A minimum of $70 spent.) This means you could potentially replace your entire map collection relatively cheaply, or alternatively you could put together an order with several friends. LINZ is switching away from sub-contracting the printing of maps, and will now print them in-house, and this is contributing towards the cheaper costs (as I understand it, at least).

  To help people figure out which maps they might need, LINZ has provided material that compares the NZMS260 and Topo50 Map series’, including diagrams showing how grids of the map sheets overlap each other. If you have a collection of NZMS260 maps and need to know which Topo50 maps to buy for the same areas, it’s a good place to start.

The Topo50 maps are already accessible, in a sense. The complete database from which they’re produced is available using NZTopoOnline, part of the LINZ website which can be used to generate and print maps of sections of New Zealand on the fly. Presently the maps from NZTopoOnline don’t come out quite the same, however, because it’s an automated system that only has raw mapping data to generate from. Apart from having been printed professionally and with predictable consistency, printed LINZ maps, once available, will all be rendered more nicely as a consequence of people having gone through the data to ensure it looks readable, notably by doing things such as ensuring labels of features don’t overlap each other, and that kind of thing. With the natural move towards a more digital and centralised storage of all the information, however, it may become much more feasible in the future to print maps on demand, or have agents do so on LINZ’s behalf rather than require retailers to stock hundreds of different maps just in case someone might walk in wanting one. This is more towards the future, however.

Consequences for old maps

Obviously the old NZMS260 maps will still work, and it’s not as if geography changes simply because the New Zealand government decides to draw a new set of lines over it. There’s an underlying theme of encouraging people to stop using their old NZMG maps, but it might take a while for them to disappear completely. I certainly won’t throw out my maps simply because they’re old, and I doubt many of my friends will. Old maps are a great source of information about things like old tracks and routes that are no longer officially marked. Some people have lots of lines and marked up information drawn over their existing maps which is great for reference material when visiting somewhere, and that won’t be thrown out quickly. What I expect to do, however, is to move towards the Topo50 series of maps and take them out tramping with me.

The real problems will occur when communicating information about maps using two different systems, however. For instance, the potential of confusion if someone gives an NZMG grid reference from a 260 series map, which another person tries to apply to the NZTM2000 grid of a Topo250 map. New Zealand’s Land Search and Rescue is taking this seriously, and at the change-over date, all of SAR will immediately switch to the new mapping system in an attempt to avoid confusion when communicating between each other.

The confusion between the two map grids has been of particular concern, and a decision made to reduce confusion has been to design the new NZTM2000 grid so that the New Zealand land mass which it describes does not even overlap the same land mass in the NZMG when the reference numbers are the same. In other words, a grid reference in either system for anywhere in New Zealand will appear as if it’s pointing to open sea if it’s applied back to the wrong system.

Now it’s just a case of waiting

Hopefully this is a reasonable summary of not just what’s changing, but why it’s changing. The “what” part is easy, but having written this up I now feel as if I’m getting a better grasp on what the reasons and problems are. As I wrote earlier, I’d appreciate feedback and corrections, and whatever further thoughts or comments anyone might have on this.

I guess the most important thing to keep in mind is that it’s coming very soon. It seems like a very significant and important change in the use of maps in New Zealand, yet to date I haven’t seen much publicity of it outside tramping circles. I’ve wondered if there may be large clusters of people whom it might affect, who aren’t even aware that the entire mapping system is about to change.

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!

The whole thing reminds me of a few years ago. The day after I finished writing up my Masters’ Thesis I had nothing else to do at university except turn up to my office and stare blankly at the wall for 16 hours, but instead I decided to just start walking towards the Hutt Valley for as long as I could before either getting bored or exhausted. This went well until I neared Petone, walking along the cycle lane that’s embedded in a thin strip between State Highway 2 and the railway line, and therefore I think many Wellington cyclists would be familiar with this area. After about 6 km of straight walking between Ngauranga towards Petone, the barrier between the cycle way and the road disappeared and final 400 metres of this cycle-way was fully open to high speed traffic, and not at all well conditioned for walking on.

I suppose cyclists are used to this kind of thing, but I certainly wasn’t and standing on the edge of a crash barrier with nowhere to run if a high speed vehicle gets too close is very unnerving. I certainly wasn’t going to turn around and walk all the way back to Wellington, though. I managed to cross the barrier in the middle of State Highway 2 and caught an old lady turning out of Horokiwi Road, who neglected to ask me what I was doing but happily offered to give me a ride to wherever I was going. She didn’t seem to understand the concept of me only wanting to get a ride for the 400 metres which I couldn’t comfortably walk, so I just told her I was on my way to Petone.

Straight after that incident, the whole thing just felt wrong to me. There shouldn’t be places where it’s possible to drive but not safely walk. The only feasible way I can think of to walk to Petone without walking along that road would be to head out towards Johnsonville or Newlands and somehow get through Belmont Regional Park, which is ridiculous when there’s such a direct route. It’s a double tragedy that the stretch of coast between Ngauranga and Petone would make a truly awesome walkway if it were able to be developed as such. It’d be one of those walkways that’s fantastically sunny in good weather and would get fantastically thrashed by exciting waves in bad weather. Presently, however, it’s nothing more than a metropolitan railway line and commuter highway to shunt workers between Lower Hutt and Central Wellington.

Another area in Wellington which I think could be vastly improved for walking is the coast-line along-side Pauatahanui Inlet.

I grew up near here, and every so often I end up in the area. A couple of years ago I came out of Belmont Regional Park on provincial SH58, walked around to Pauatahanui, spent half an hour browsing through the Wildlife Reserve, then began to make my way back towards Paremata to hop on a train home as it got dark. The problem, which I hadn’t expected, was that the coastal road around Pauatahanui Inlet is nothing more than a road, and there’s virtually zero space for walking between the open road and a steep drop-off into the harbour. Despite having a reasonable torch, I spent more than an hour crawling along the edge of the road, hugging the crash barrier and often clinging to the harbour side of it for protection every time a car sped around a corner. As soon as I found an opportunity, I ducked into Whitby and walked triple the distance simply to get away from such an awful un-walkable road. It’s a shame, because this could be an awesome walk around a beautifully scenic part of Porirua Harbour. As it is, it’s an uneasy potential death-trap for anyone who chooses not to shield themselves in a vehicle.

I generally think of the Wellington region as being extremely walkable and for that I’m proud of it, especially compared with some of the alternatives in New Zealand and around the world. It still has its share of places that could be improved, however. As for people who like walking and cycling in Auckland, well if the situation is as it seems then I hope they eventually get their access route over the harbour bridge. Being required to own and use a car simply to access the most obvious and shortest-by-an-order-of-magnitude route from A to B is really sucky.

An underlying problem in New Zealand walking recreation is being aware of the places where public right of access is available. With some areas it’s obvious, such as national parks, but with others it isn’t. Land Information New Zealand, which produces the most commonly used 1:50000 maps of the entire country, would seem to be the most obvious authority on the subject, but LINZ has never been given a clear directive, nor the funding (presumably), to produce and maintain accessible maps of where public rights of access exist. LINZ even prints a disclaimer on all of their maps which states “The representation on this map of a road or track does not necessarily indicate public right of access”.

Without adequate maps, discovering what is publicly accessible land can be a mission. Gaining permission is often necessary to access public lands, such as when needing to walk over privately own farms. Sometimes simply figuring out if land is public or private, and then locating the appropriate person to ask for permission, can be challenging and time consuming, and disproportionate to whatever recreational activity a person might be hoping for. With the effort required, some people don’t bother to seek permission when they should, often leading to more problems and bad feelings.

Land-owners, especially those with operational farms, often their own legitimate concerns and sometimes motivations to deny access, especially if they’ve experienced people in the past who have caused problems through ignorance or otherwise. For instance, it’s a common complaint that recreational walkers might damage the land, leave farm gates open or closed when they shouldn’t be, spook animals, make annoying noise at 2am, and so on. The Walking Access Commission can play a helpful role by negotiating on everyone’s behalf, by resolving conflicts, and where appropriate by encouraging and providing enough information to allow people to contact land-owners themselves and to act respectfully as appropriate.

The Request For Proposals for the new system (PDF link), which lists the requirements, makes interesting reading with regard to what the commission wants. It outlines a system that should be able to graphically represent regions, roads and strips in a 1:50,000 scale to match and overlay maps that already exist, store relevant contact information and links for areas of land, and help the commission track various meta-data about particular pieces of land, such as historical issues and complaints and resolutions.

The RFP indicates a hopeful schedule of a signed agreement by July 2009, and a ready system a year later. With any luck if an agreement is reached with a suitable provider, then perhaps by mid to late 2010 we could all be better informed about where it’s legal to walk in New Zealand.

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.

By a nifty follow-on logic, all our clean and green energy was generated from environmentally sound renewable sources, unlike all those ugly nuclear waste cesspool generating machines in places like the USA. New Zealand’s self-propagated reputation being clean and green assured me that our own sources had no side effects beyond the tasty electricity that we all consumed. Hydro dams were brilliant, because they do nothing more than move water from one side to the other, and slow it down a little in exchange for some energy on the side. They certainly didn’t pump masses of black polluting smoke into the air. Best of all, it was all free! Water renewed itself, and if you think about it really hard, it’s just another manifestation of solar power. (Don’t think too hard about solar power, though, or you might realise that it’s just another manifestation of nuclear power!) In hindsight I realise this belief about where all our energy came from wasn’t quite correct, but it was the gist that mattered. (Side note: New Zealand generates its energy from many different sources, and there’s a very cool representation of the break-down of power usage and generation sources in real time.)

I remember a family holiday driving around the South Island which must have been in the late 1980s, walking through the old town centre of Cromwell, with part of the attraction being that these very streets were intended to be completely submerged shortly afterwards as part of the Clyde Dam project — one of the most recent major hydro dam projects in New Zealand, and now the third largest hydro dam in New Zealand. The entire idea of an engineering feat that would do this sounded very impressive to me. Growing up helped me to notice that renewable hydro energy comes at a cost. After a while I realised that the entire “clean and green” attitude that New Zealand tells itself about is also a myth in some respects (but not all). Through actually meeting people, I also found that most French people aren’t mean and evil unfair nuclear polluting terrorist economic embargo seeking bullies, certainly not in the same way as their government was in the mid-1980s. I’m therefore profoundly sorry if my 1980s sentiments that I expressed earlier offended anyone. But that’s going off on a tangent.

50 years ago: Regarding hydro dams and conservation, I was trying to research material for another post, and references led me to the book titled Heritage Destroyed — The Crisis in Scenery Preservation in New Zealand, by Dr John Tenison Salmon, from which I pulled the quote at the top of this post. Dr Salmon’s 1960 book is recognised as one of the very influential and possibly pivotal publications that changed the thinking that many New Zealanders had about conservation, and how it applies to New Zealand. I tracked down a copy at the Wellington Central Library. It should be available through most New Zealand libraries, through the inter-loan system if not directly.

Having now read all 100 pages of the book, I’d rate it as essential reading for anyone interested in conservation in New Zealand. Regardless of whether one agrees with Dr Salmon’s arguments or not, it’s a fantastic snapshot of how things were 50 years ago, through the eyes of a well qualified author whose work became very influential for others.

The book was published out of frustration during a time when “conservation” was barely defined, let alone having any significant place in the New Zealand Government’s agenda. Assets such as “scenery”, “wildlife” and “recreation” had little or no defined tangible value in the minds of a majority of people, making it very difficult to compare their loss with obvious economic gains of something like additional electricity generation. Nine national parks had been declared by 1960 with the general intent of preserving them, but the designations didn’t mean much in the face of a state that effectively had un-checked god-like powers to over-ride amenities such as scenic values, even when areas had been set aside specifically for that purpose. The picture painted of 1960 by Dr Salmon is one in which the New Zealand Government Bureaucracy was systematically working its way through destroying nearly every scenic asset the country had if there was any chance of exchanging it for some kind of useful infrastructure, and frequently there was. Officially scenery and nature had no economically defined value compared with infrastructure for things like power generation.

The author spends a lot of time describing the “horrors” of the Ministry of Works’ unnecessarily destructive road-building practices, and especially the Electricity Department’s severe adjustments of lake levels in what had previously been some of New Zealand’s greatest scenic attractions. He noted something of an insane indifference to environmental values by government engineers and management in charge of the projects, who refused to make even minimal and supposedly quite easy compromises to preserve the scenic assets that were being affected. Examples that he gives include the leaving of half-submerged buildings poking out of a raised Lake Tekapo, and not bothering to clear the trees before raising the level of lakes Pukaki and Lake Monowai, which resulted in corpses of dead trees surrounding the shore-line that would persist for up to 200 years. Dr Salmon also describes the 1958 scenery “conference” which had been promoted on behalf of New Zealand’s Prime Minister (Walter Nash) as an occasion where interested parties could discuss the management of New Zealand’s scenic values, but which actually turned out to be a government-dictated farce whereby everyone except the Electricity Department and the Ministry of Works were severely restricted in what they could present and for how long, and anybody who expressed views contrary to what these departments had already decided was completely ignored anyway.

He pointed out that in 1958 New Zealand spent a grand total of £50,000 for all nine national parks put together (about NZ$3.1 million in 2009 terms after inflation according to the NZ CPI Inflation Calculator). This meant about $1.30 per person in today’s terms, which for me personally will buy about a third of a day’s lunch if I’m being a cheapskate. The author noted that on a per-person basis, the USA was spending nine times as much on its own national parks.

On page 89, he comments on the state of Tongariro National Park, noting that:

Mount Ruapehu in the vicinity of the Chateau skiing grounds is developing into one vast rubbish heap. Not only do we find there the litter of holiday-makers, but also the junk from broken-down chair-lifts tossed into ravines by people who should know better and who should be setting an example to the general public. [...] My impressions of Ruapehu behind the Chateau were that it is rapidly becoming the National Rubbish Dump instead of a National Park.

Most of Dr Salmon’s discussion is about preservation of scenic values, and he only slides past other conservation topics such as preservation of species and of the native environment as a whole. (Interesting for a biologist’s perspective, I thought.) This may simply be because there was still a lot of research to be done about what was actually happening to the environment, and to what extent beyond anecdotal evidence and the obvious scenic damage. At one point, however, he suggests a team of up to 100 fully trained field biologists are needed to survey the situation properly. Towards the latter part of the book, the author describes the severe effects that introduced predators have had on the New Zealand bush, noting that its disappearance will certainly result in accelerated erosion, flooding and impending natural disasters. He advocates the dramatic reduction or annihilation of all introduced pests (deer rabbits, possums, etc) if at all possible. I also found it interesting to notice on page 86 a mention of 1080 poison, which New Zealand is now the largest user of world-wide albeit with some protests. He suspected might be a magic bullet for this purpose but for which there was also insufficient information 50 years ago. I hadn’t realised 1080 had been around for so long, but I suppose now I know better.

We’ve definitely changed since 1960. For one thing, New Zealand’s $3.1 million spent maintaining National Parks in 1958 (expressed as 2009 money) could be approximately compared with the 2008/2009 Budget, in which the Conservation Vote was allocated roughly $403 million, or well over 100 times that amount. It’s not a completely fair comparison given that the Department of Conservation does other things besides maintaining national parks, just as the 1958 National Parks Board wasn’t responsible for everything that DOC does today. Still, the difference of a couple of orders of magnitude is quite telling. If you want to see details of where the 2008/09 money was budgeted, click through the above link to Treasury’s website and read the section titled “Vote Conservation”.

Changes in attitude:

The snapshot of conservation problems in 1960 is interesting by itself, but I think by far the most valuable aspect of this book today is how it demonstrates the attitudes and government of the time, compared with today. The author frequently complains about the frustrations of government bureaucracies that go to great lengths to hide information for their own operational convenience even though (and perhaps because) many parties are likely be affected, ignore concerns that are expressed by people who are demonstrably qualified, generally work behind closed doors, and in some cases would outright lie when questioned and simply get away with it. Some people would claim that this is exactly what happens with the New Zealand government today, but I think things have changed a lot.

The OIA. For one thing, we have the Official Information Act, which Dr Salmon would have greatly benefited from. The OIA essentially says that one can ask any question of a government department (as long as it’s reasonably specific), and that department is required to provide the requested information within a set time-frame unless there’s a very good reason not to do so. My favourite summary of New Zealand’s OIA is from Rick Snell, an Australian Journalist blogging for the Sydney Morning Herald who compared it with Australia’s Freedom of Information Act. More recently however, Russell Brown presented an episode of Media 7 in which his panel of journalists and other stakeholders discussed New Zealand’s OIA, also noting a few down-sides and things that aren’t working perfectly under the Act. The entire episode can be streamed via YouTube through his blog post at the link above.

The RMA. Another revolutionary change since 1960 is New Zealand’s Resource Management Act of 1991, which defines a structured process of consent through which an organisation must go with the relevant local authories before large and potentially destructive projects such as gigantic hydro dams can go ahead. The 1991 RMA grew out of concerns about the conduct of a previous government in pushing its Think Big projects in the 1980s without adequate consultation. One of the Think Big projects (interestingly enough) was the Clyde Dam that I mentioned near the top of this post, which submerged the old town centre of Cromwell.

The RMA itself has been at the centre of controversy in recent years. Although it has allowed for objections to be heard from virtually anyone, and then considered out in the open, it has also resulted in many infrastructure developments being delayed to painful extents, or otherwise canceled, thanks to the problems of getting consent. The RMA gives a lot of power to local authorities and residents to decide what happens in their back yard, and typically there’s not much incentive for people to want big and potentially destructive things happening for a variety of reasons, even if they collectively help the nation as a whole. The recently elected government has pledged to review the act, and it’ll be interesting to see what it comes up with. In some ways it’s curious that our new Minister of Conservation is already signing away parts of the conservation estate, however. Hopefully the changes won’t approach the scenarios described in Dr Salmon’s book.

DOC. The third huge difference since Dr Salmon’s 1960 book is the existence of the Department of Conservation, which was formed by an Act of Parliament in 1987. Government lands had previously been divided between a variety of government departments and various authorities, but the Department of Conservation combined much of the management into a single entity, with a primary goal “to conserve New Zealand’s natural heritage for all to enjoy now and in the future”. The very existence of such a department is in stark contrast to New Zealand in the 1960′s, where for the most part enjoyment was just a side benefit to be had from the environment once any economic benefit had been extracted.

Ultimately Dr Salmon called for an authority independent of the government to be given power as a kind of arbitrator on conservation issues. From his 1960 viewpoint, he claimed (on page 58) that “New Zealand, compared with much of the rest of the world, is extremely backward in the conservation of her natural resouces, the preservation of her scenery, and in the implementation of a sound policy for the preservation and development of her National Parks and scenic reserves. A conservancy with adequate legislative powers could do a great deal to alleviate the present unsatisfactory situation in New Zealand.” It’s a shame that he died in 1999 (according to the library catalogue), because I’d be interested to know what he thought of the current structure.

Combined changes

I find it fascinating to see how these three aspects of the government system interact with each other, particularly DOC and the RMA. Several months ago, I spent a horrible time working through a collection of submissions towards the Tararua District Council’s upcoming District Plan. It was horrible because it was so excessively boring, and I had a headache for three consecutive evenings. Lately the Tararua District has become a target for energy companies wanting to build wind farms. The RMA makes it much easier to get streamlined consent if a proposal can be shown to be in line with a District Plan, so naturally several large power generation companies all wanted to get their hands in on the authoring of the new plan for the Tararua District.

I merely chose to read through the submissions, and at the time I really felt sorry for the poor people of the Tararua District Council, who presumably have few resources to draw on and suddenly have to cope with a massive influx of large businesses from out of town, all trying to fight their way into the district to support their infrastructure plans for the rest of New Zealand. Some submissions even read as if they were a patronising pat on the head for the Tararua District Council. Translated, they might have said something like: “Your proposed plan is such a cute effort, but it has typing mistakes and some of the references are inconsistent. Why not just replace this entire section with a large block of text we’ve written for you? We already write so many plans for other councils and we clearly have far more experience in these things than you do.” In a few cases it appeared as if the submissions had been made so overwhelmingly detailed so as to disguise the important parts of the detail.

I can fully appreciate why power generation companies do this and I don’t have a problem with their actions, as long as it happens out in the open where everyone can see it, and is considered fairly on its merits. And this is where the Department of Conservation comes in, because it was especially notable that DOC also made a submission to the district plan, offering advice from people who have a lot of expertise in conservation management and who are less likely to be biased towards specific commercial interests over other issues. Effectively, power companies that are owned by the state are making submissions to a local government that might well contradict submissions made by another part of the national government.

On one hand this sounds extremely bureaucratic and wasteful, such that all these government entities should just save money and overheads by talking to each other behind government doors. Personally I think that this particular consequence of the RMA is awesome, though, because it puts all the debate between experts out into the open where everyone who chooses can read and analyse it. When it was revealed in February that DOC had made a compromise behind closed doors with Meridian Energy over a wind farm, it was strongly criticised.

So far, I think the main problems with the RMA are in its tendency to result in certain kinds of infrastructure, and in its tendency (especially right now) to pile hugely important and detailed submissions for major infrastructure onto local bodies that are unlikely to have all the necessary resources to consider them properly. I should stress that I’m hardly an expert on it though, and I know there are additional problems that people have. I don’t know if the new National Government’s reforms of the RMA are likely to make it any better, and I guess time will tell. Having just finished Dr Salmon’s book, however, I guess I’m simply really happy at the moment that we’ve advanced past the conservation management of 1960!

If you think this sounds familiar, it might be because you’ve already heard of Te Araroa (The Long Pathway). It’s a project, so far 10 years old, managed by the Te Araroa Trust to create a walkway the length of New Zealand, both by setting aside existing tracks and by building new tracks. Just yesterday in fact, the Te Araroa Trust posted a response to the media hype about the possibility of doubling up the two routes in as many places as possible, re-assuring people that Te Araroa won’t be dumbed down for walkers in order to accommodate the flatter and lower types of terrain more suited to cyclists.

As Michelle noted, a cycleway probably would add to tourism and it’s likely to generate more money from tourism than a walking trail. What makes me suspicious, though, is that New Zealand’s already had many years, during which cycling has been increasing in popularity, to do exactly this. If the numbers overwhelmingly stacked up, we should have seen this idea become popular without a recession 5 years ago. Perhaps nobody had the idea, or (more likely) nobody thought to suggest it to the government?

The primary reason for it to happen right now, which I don’t think many would deny, is to keep people in work and producing something during a time when jobs are scarce. If we’re doing it because it’s a great thing to have then fantastic, but if it’s simply to keep people working then I’m curious to know what other projects (if any) people could be working on that might produce something more immediately beneficial than a cycleway. Perhaps one advantage is that it might create certain types of jobs in areas that traditionally suffer most during recessions, such as smaller towns.

I’m not an economist of course. Doubtless we’ll see some clearer numbers about the whole thing before it properly goes ahead, which will hopefully compare it with alternative proposals, and I’d like to be proved wrong. It still sounds like a cool thing to have, and I feel generally good about anything that reduces reliance on cars for arbitrary and stupid reasons such as not actually having footpaths. Having recently been trapped in a hotel in New Jersey, thanks largely to design around roads, was a reminder of this, but it also occurs in New Zealand on a smaller scale. eg. Walking or cycling from Wellington out to Petone involves a nice, fenced-off cycleway for the first hour of walking before you’re suddenly thrown into a very exposed un-barriered region of State Highway 2 for the final 400 metres! If it isn’t economically justified and simply happens to be politicisation, I suppose at least we’ll get a nice national cycleway out of it.

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.

Building Code Compliance Documents for New Zealand Back-Country Huts

Until 31st October, the Department of Building and Housing is accepting submissions on its proposed compliance documents for the Department of Conservation to use in building and maintaining back-country huts.

This is closely related to the consultation of the Building Code document which I posted about back in June. The compliance documents, however, are designed to accompany the building code. Rather than being an overall plan of how things should work, these ones state some quite specific engineering and building requirements that DOC will be expected to follow when it builds huts. The advantage of this is that they’re tailored very specifically to DOC’s requirements, as opposed to the current situation where DOC has been having to do some quite ridiculous bureaucratic things to stay in compliance with building codes that haven’t been very relevant to the back-country environment anyway.

I’m not a builder or an engineer, but I found Part F (Toilets and Grey Water) to be an interesting read, because until now I’d never realised that so much documented detail went into the design of long drops.

One point that befuddles me (although I’m sure there’s a good reason) is point 1.7.4(iii) to do with the design of back-country long drops, which states that “Windows shall be non-opening and, if located in the wall, the window shall face either west or south”. The previous point already stated that skylights aren’t allowed, so I guess a window that’s not in the wall would have to be in the door… and in that case it can be facing any direction (to give the occupant a great view, of course). Now I’m really keen to know why windows shouldn’t be facing east or north, however. Maybe it’s something to do with the direction the Sun is most likely to be coming from.

Tararua District Plan

I posted earlier that the Tararua District Council was flooded with submissions from major wind-farm-friendly power companies when it put its Draft District Plan up for consultation, and that many of those submissions seek to do things that seem a little suspect, like removing provisions from the plan that protect the “Skyline of the Tararua Range” and the “Skyline of the Ruahine Range”. Until 3rd of October, the TDC is still seeking feedback about those submissions that it received, and I’ve been trying very hard to read them.

It would have been much less painful if the power companies had been as brief, direct and clear as the person who simply stated “The confiscation of private land for road reserve without consideration for fair value is extortion, unconstitutional and an abuse of statuatory authority.” Unfortunately power companies pay lots of people who specialise in writing these kinds of submissions, and they tend to come with lots of detail and bickering about terminology amongst the more important things.

Nevertheless I did survive reading it, although I’m still not sure I’ve appreciated the complete essence. For what it’s worth, I posted my observations about the submissions over at the WTMC forum.

A couple of weeks ago I was intent on making a submission, but I’m no longer sure if I’m quite as interested, because it seems to me that most of the submissions relate more specifically to the Tararua District and might not have a huge effect on the recreational areas in the Tararua Range. Because of this, I don’t really feel that it’s my business to start making submissions about what goes on in that region when I don’t live there, and my main interaction with it is to drive through on the way to the nearby mountain ranges.

You tend to start off feeling quite angry and motivated with these things, but then find out it’s actually quite boring. Then you fall asleep and dream about kittens, and aren’t quite so angry by the end of it. It’s probably why controversial submissions are written this way, too.

A national policy statement for Renewable Electricity Generation

This probably wouldn’t have been as much of an issue if there hadn’t been the recent controversy around wind generation in the Tararua District, but a friend pointed out to me that the Ministry for the Environment (so many ministries) is accepting submissions for its “Proposed National Policy Statement for Renewable Electricty Generation”. It’s actually a very short document and is intended to be a broad overview of how decision making processes should be directed when considering applications under the Resource Management Act.

It’s worth a look, and the actual policy is visible here. I did notice that there doesn’t seem to be a specific mention of anything like Recreational Values. It probably belongs somewhere in Policy 2.

The Tararua District Council has published the proposed plan on its website. In addition, comments received about the proposed plan are also available for download, either as a summary or as a complete scan of every submission.

The Tararua District is already known for the Tararua Wind Farm, which is operated by TrustPower and sits in the wind tunnel between the Tararua and Ruahine Ranges. This is probably why the energy companies have such a vested interest in the region. As Robb pointed out, however, the changes proposed by the energy companies might result in changes to the District Plan which make it much easier for very large wind turbines to be built, and which could potentially affect the skyline of the Tararua Range and the Ruahine Range, whatever that might entail.

As I write this I’m still trying to figure out exactly what’s been submitted and its significance. Section 2.6.1.3 of the proposed district plan looks of particular interest because it deals with “protection of important natural features, landscape and habitats”. The section goes on to refer to several notable things which include both the Tararuas and the Ruahines. On this section, Meridian Energy has commented about the ambiguity of what makes a “significant landscape”.

Another possible concern is that TrustPower has sought deletion of certain clauses which refer to protecting the “Skyline of the Tararua Range” and the “Skyline of the Ruahine Range” and the “Skyline of the Puketoi Range”, arguing that “skyline” is an ambiguous term and not based on a valid assessment of the landscape. (According to the original draft plan if I understand it correctly, this clause was originally requested by the Department of Conservation.) TrustPower also wants to change some of the terminology from terms like “protection of” to alternative terms like “management of”.

As Robb also pointed out in his blog (see his comment), another important concern is just how much risk the mountain ranges could be in themselves from continued development by energy companies in the longer term future, particularly if there’s a change of government. Such a change any time in the next 10 or 20 years might result in a major change in policy towards large scale development either nearby or inside what is currently considered back-country territory. Irrespective of what the actual motives are or the likeliness of things happening today, these are the kinds of reasons why it’s critically important to monitor what actually gets written down in these sorts of guiding documents. It’s never absolutely clear what might change in the future to affect the motivations and intents of corporations (or leaders or influential individuals) — particularly when lots of money is involved — but at least having some kind of protection in writing makes it easier to keep things in perspective.

District plans by themselves don’t usually determine whether resource consent will be granted for any particular request, but wanting to do something that’s consistent with a district plan that’s already developed will typically make it much easier to get something rubber-stamped. This is likely to be why several energy companies, and also the government’s Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority, have requested that the plan explicitly recognises that renewable energy is an important thing that contributes to the Tararua District, as it will help renewable energy-related requests to be more streamlined and more likely to be granted through the resource consent process. At the same time, a district plan that makes a less explicit attempt to protect the landscape and skyline value of nearby mountain ranges would make it even easier for energy companies to gain consent for structures (such as massive 200 metre high wind turbines, for instance) which are visible from very far away. This might be a good thing depending on who you are. For instance, making it easier for companies to develop an industry in your region will also inject money into your local economy, although with appropriate guidance it might also be possible to have the same effect without having as many negative externalities. From a tramping and outdoors perspective, this could be harder to find a genuine outdoor experience in certain parts of the Tararua and Ruahine ranges, especially if there are always large human-built structures in the background.

Personally I’d be interested to know what the proposed District Plan means by “skyline”. This is also part of the issue raised by the mentioned energy companies, and the plan doesn’t seem very specific. Reading the draft, I’m confused if “skyline” refers to the silhouette of the mountains as seen from a distance, if it means the view of the horizon as seen from within the mountains, if it refers to the views from people within the Tararua district, or if it’s a combination of these. For myself I think all are important, but that’s just me — whether it’s something that’s out-weighed by the importance of wind generation of electricity in the Tararua District is something that I think needs to be clarified and decided.

Comments about the submissions are being accepted by the Tararua District Council until Friday 3rd of October 2008, so if you’re feeling concerned about this, you have until then to make your voice heard.

For myself, I’m thinking about submitting comments on the submissions to express my concern over protecting the landscape in some way for everyone who visits the area for tramping purposes, but I haven’t completely decided exactly what I’ll say at this point. As a regular visitor from Wellington, I think I might have to at least double, if not triple the amount of after-tramping ice-cream I buy to even come close to the kind of contribution that energy companies make towards the Tararua District’s economy. This is probably the context in which any submission I make will be treated, and from many perspectives that’s fair enough. Ultimately, it’s really also up to the people who live and spend a lot of time in the Tararua District to decide what they want. Personally I’m hoping they decide that the landscape is an important enough thing to make sure that it’s preserved for themselves and for everyone.

The consultation covers tracks throughout most of Wellington’s Town Belt such as the Tinakori Hill, parts of the Southern Walkway, parts of the Skyline Walkway, Wrights Hill, Te Kopahou Reserve, and a few others. Actually after a brief scan, at least part of the proposals look to be opening up certain areas to mountain bikes which frequently get used by people on mountain bikes already.

If you’re interested in the tracks around the area, it might be worth your while to have a browse of the draft policy and make a submission, either in support of the proposals or not. Additional related WCC policies that are up for consultation during the same time period are the Draft Walking Policy and the Draft Cycling Policy, which respectively aim to frame the policies around encouraging walking and cycling in Wellington and making them safe.

The catchment is very accessible to Wellington and probably one of the most commonly visited forest parks in the area. As well as being popular for daywalks, tramping and hunting, it’s full of private batches — some of which are quite extensive, particularly along the Orongorongo River, and is accessible by 4WD from around the coast. No doubt there are a lot of interests.

The Poneke Area Office is also planning a couple of information evenings, and instructions about how to become involved in these are also available on the survey page.

A few weeks ago when I wrote my trip report about visiting Cattle Ridge, I made a comment about the apparent absurdity of DOC’s decision to remove a bunk from the 6 bunk hut. This is apparently due to some ambiguity in the various New Zealand building codes which imply that these days, certain kinds of structures that are intended for a certain number of people require a certain number of fire exits, as well as various other things that seem more suited to populated areas. The consequence? Well somewhere along the line, someone decided that back-country huts with 6 or more bunks would require at least 2 fire exits. Because the design of many back-country huts makes it impractical to add an additional fire exit (there’s simply not enough wall space), DOC adopted the policy, in some cases, of removing one of the beds to turn 6 bunk huts into 5 bunk huts.

This bunk-removal policy seemed absurd to us at the time (and it still does) because realistically, there’s no way to tell how many people will already be at a hut before you leave home. If you get there and it’s full, it’s unlikely that anyone will turn back simply because there’s no vacant bed inside. Typically, excess people either camp outside (if it’s reasonable and safe to do so, which it sometimes isn’t), or simply stretch out over the floor. This is exactly what happened at Triangle Hut last March, where we met a group from the Wanganui Tramping Club, and ended up stuffing 12 people into a 6 bunker. It was reasonably crowded, although even then with some good tetris tactics there was probably space for at least 3 or 4 more people on the floor if we’d needed it, and that was without any attempt at double-bunking, which is also known to occur on occasion when situations get desperate.

In short, the number of beds in a back-country hut has little effect on how many people will be using it on any given night — it only has a bearing on their comfort while they’re using it, which is why it appeared absurd to us that some kind of bureaucratic anomoly was causing bunks to be removed from huts in the Tararua Range with no clear benefit to anyone. It seems unfair to put much direct blame on the Department of Conservation, however, which (as a government department) isn’t just required by law to do a lot of things, but also has some kind of obligation to set an example of abiding by the law.

More recently when visiting Mt Richmond Forest Park, we noticed that the 6 bunk huts there hadn’t had bunks removed, but all of the huts we visited had a clearly marked second Fire Exit sign above one of the windows. Rather than being any kind of preference for Nelson, this was more likely because the 6 bunk huts in Mt Richmond Forest Park appeared to be slightly larger from the beginning than several of the huts in Tararua Forest Park. The Richmond Range huts appeared to be slightly wider, and actually had a reasonably large window off to one side, over which a fire exit sign could be placed, presumably being satisfactory enough as a second fire exit under the building codes, and meaning that the 6 bunk hut could keep its full complement of beds. As a side note this wasn’t the only extra thing they had. Unlike huts such as Cattle Ridge and Dundas (both in the Tararuas), the bunks in the Richmond Forest Park huts that we visited were actually long enough to properly fit the standard-issue Dunlop mattresses that DOC likes to put in most of its huts. In other words, they didn’t uncomfortably arch upwards in the middle.

Fortunately, it seems likely that these inconvenient bureaucratic legislative curiosities might not last for too much longer. After returning from Cattle Ridge I flicked an email to DOC to ask about the specific legislation that was causing them to make these structural adjustments. In the response, I was informed that the Department of Conservation has been working with the Department of Building and Housing to develop some proposed changes to the Building Code which would exempt back-country huts from many of the clauses in the code. The proposed changes define what a back-country hut is, and then proceed to specify exceptions for back-country huts from several clauses in the code which deal with things like artificial lighting, escape routes, providing for people with disabilities (who’d rarely if ever visit back-country huts anyway), and requiring water supplies that are guaranteed to be drinkable.

The submission document is structured into 10 questions and asks about each modified clause, providing space for comments about each proposed change. I sat down for about an hour this evening and made my own submission, which was mostly in support with a few minor concerns about exactly how things were worded. If you do feel strongly about this kind of thing and read this post in time, I’d suggest that you do the same.

A very brief background of this post is that the Kaimanawa Range itself has a big hole of private land cut out of the middle of it, much of which is mountanous and generally looks interesting. Public regions around the outside are administered by the New Zealand Department of Conservation. The majority of the land is Maori land (according to Map 6 of the maps included in the park management plan), and much of that land is leased to third parties. On our particular trip, parts of the private land located near where we wanted to go are leased by Air Charter Taupo, which exclusively flies hunters into the region for a price.

For tramping access, the company provides a system where individuals can purchase a one year entry permit for $30, after which there are strict restrictions on where that person can go within the block. The page on the company’s website which describes the restrictions states that only three routes are allowed at all, even for those with permits. The ironic statement that would probably twist a few traditional trampers’ guts is “red line access is not permitted”. Camping is also prohibited, which means it’s necessary to cross the land and be out the other side within a day.

To justify its policies, the company claims that it has already suffered considerable expense fighting against efforts from overseas investors to lock trampers (and everyone) out of the region completely. The price for access is to cover costs of leasing the land without imposing an unfair burden on its hunting customers, and the permit system is also described as a way of making sure that trampers don’t disturb hunters in the private areas of the park. It claims that the Department of Conservation was approached with a request to subsidise access for members of the public, but that the department was not interested.

The Kaimanawa Forest Park zone is still quite large, but it’s also around the edges with much of the mountain area being inaccessibly located in private zones. A traverse of the park without crossing private land would be nearly impossible, and one small section of the park, around Boyd Lodge, is cut off from the others completely.

Organising legal tramping in the area can be a messy experience, and this was the problem that Craig (our trip’s organiser) encountered when planning our route. The Department of Conservation website provides a list of six different contacts whose permission might need to be obtained in order to access eight separate regions of the range.

Furthermore, many of the property boundaries tend to be geometrically drawn straight lines, which take little if any notice of the geographical landscape, as might be more logical. This means that a lot of would-be good routes get randomly cut off by private property boundaries. In our planned trip, for example, there was one particular ridge that we really would have liked to walk along, but unfortunately the corner of a perfectly drawn two dimensional isosceles triangle happened to poke through about 3 kilometres in the middle. Even if we’d each paid $30 for an annual permit (despite the likeliness we’d only visit the area once or twice at most within a year), the 3 kilometres of ridgeline wasn’t on Air Charter Taupo’s list of 3 approved routes. In other words, there was no guarantee we’d be allowed to go there anyway.

It’s completely possible that Air Charter Taupo might say we could simply go ahead if we asked nicely and explained what we wanted to do, or they might have said we couldn’t cross it no matter how much we paid them. The classic problem, apart from the denial of access, is that there’s no clear way to know in advance. It was some effort in the first place to discover who was responsible for the land, and contacting to arrange specific access can also be a real hassle, especially if specific plans aren’t made until late in the process which is often the case with New Zealand back-country tramping. We didn’t bother, and we changed our plans, just as I’m sure many other people have done in the past.

A draft Kaimanawa Forest Park Management Plan was published by DOC at the end of 2005 which also, incidentally, has lots of interesting background information about the park. (Update 19-July-2008: The final plan is now available on DOC’s website.) So far I’ve only skimmed the parts that looked most interesting, but it seems the main objective of the report is Kaimanawa Forest Park rather than the Kaimanawa Range. The Forest Park, of course, only includes the parts of the range that DOC actually administers, and considerations of private land in the middle are limited to how it affects the disjointed areas of public land. Consequently, the plan tends to focus on issues specifically to do with things like working with the property owners to arrange specific access routes to public land where appropriate, rather than pro-actively arranging for access for the public to large amounts of the range, including those parts that are held privately.

With respect to the permit system put in place by Air Charter Taupo, the report agrees that the system has appeared to reduce the amount of interest in tramping in the area, but its suggestions of how to alleviate these issues are limited to ideas such as re-routing existing tracks so that they don’t cross private land as much. There’s no serious mention of ideas such as attempting to negotiate for the public to have access to large amounts of the private land under the same sorts of restrictions as would apply in public land.

One thing I found interesting (and I do only have a limited understanding of the context) was that the discussion document which requested public submissions for the management plan focused on steering suggestions towards improving and re-routing the track system, and avoided specifically inviting suggestions about negotiating more widespread access to the internal private land. This is understandable, I think, considering that DOC’s objectives are intertwined with a lot of legislation that’s very specific about what DOC is there to do. Administration of the public’s existing land is probably prioritised over acquisition of new land or negotiating for the public to access it, unless there’s clearly a good reason, or a directive from above.

We’re probably very spoiled in New Zealand compared with some other countries, in terms of having some vast areas of comparably unspoiled public land and reserves in which it’s both legal and fun to simply walk around and enjoy oneself. I really like it this way, and I do feel quite uncomfortable that it’s possible for big amounts of back-country land to simply be shut off by private owners. I do like being able to take for granted that if I see a mountain in the distance, I should be able to go for a walk around it, or over it, or wherever else, as long as I don’t spoil it for other people, and expect the same favours in return from others. I also dislike the idea of having the best or safest possible route plan being compromised by something as artificial as a property boundary in a back-country zone.

Obviously it’s a complex situation because of New Zealand’s history among many other reasons, and there are definitely a lot of issues that need to be resolved. They include commercial issues, Treaty of Waitangi issues, economic issues (including farming), people who have historical ties to land, and the odd private owner who wants a lifestyle block. (Personally I hate it when I climb up somewhere and all the spots with good views are subdivided and fenced off, although that’s probably a concession for built-up areas and may be another issue.) It’s also true that not every member of the public who accesses land — public or private — respects and looks after it in a way that’s expected of them. This undoubtedly also leads to some private owners restricting access across the board for their own protection.

In Air Charter Taupo’s case, for instance, they clearly have a business to run and part of the existing business model relies on being able to give a small number of people exclusive access to large areas of land in exchange for large amounts of money. For the actual owners of the land, it probably makes commercial sense under the current environment to lease it and make some money off it, if the alternative is to simply leave it alone.

Anyway, all of this aside, I really hope this gets sorted one day to improve the public access to some of these large and significant areas of back-country land. I’m fully aware that there are a lot of opinions out there about this kind of issue, and realistically I’m a bit of a late-comer.