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.

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.

The story was first penned in The Manawatu Standard, and it’s since been picked up by Morning Report on National Radio (streaming available in your choice of [Windows Media Player], [MP3] or [Ogg Vorbis] depending on your preference).

I don’t know what the errors are, and perhaps they’re especially bad. On the other hand, I wonder if the fact that the Topo50 series maps have errors means that they’re any worse than the 260 series. It’s hard to tell for sure without more information. It’s in everyone’s interests to have maps that are correct, but it’s common for NZ topo maps to have errors here and there, and sometimes it’s just necessary to accept this. The only way to really be sure about a region, short of asking someone trustworthy or going out with them, is to be prepared for anything, look at the landscape, be in a frame of mind to change plans if necessary and then learn about an area from experience.

I vaguely remember something from a while back (but can’t find a reference) in preparing Topo50, whereby LINZ was convinced to include older tracks and emergency routes that had been removed from some of the more recent 260 series maps. Prior to that there had been discussions about removing even more tracks from the map, but there was an outcry to the best of my recollection. We discussed this in our tramping triangle at work today, and someone suggested that perhaps the false or missing tracks are old tracks that were shown on older maps of the region, and have since been put back in the new Topo50 series.

The strength of topo maps (at least in New Zealand) has never really been about tracks, it’s terrain and topography. Keeping track of tracks and routes is a difficult thing to do, because they’re often difficult to see from the air, especially under trees. They change frequently, often without any official influence. People will sometimes go out expecting to find a good track or poled route based on a map, and find something quite different, but this isn’t something unusual with earlier maps and I’m not sure why it should be different with Topo50 maps. If you happen to go out expecting to find a track, but there isn’t a track, then clearly the map’s wrong. All it does it change the rules a little. it may make sense to continue depending on things like circumstances, experience, conditions and knowledge of the rest of the environment. If you happen to be not terribly confident with continuing, though, the obvious thing to do is something different. In other words, do what it takes to get back into whatever your comfort zone happens to be.

This may mean returning to where there was a track, and going back the way you came to return another day, or stopping and finding a safe place to camp for the night (unless you’re a victim of The Hut Fallacy) to consider things properly with a clear head in the morning. I guess this whole philosophy implies some kind of good judgement, which isn’t always present and not because people are irresponsible. Sometimes people just have bad days, or groups make strange decisions that individuals might never make alone. I don’t know exactly what to do about this because there have forever been people getting into trouble for these reasons and most likely there will be in the future, irrespective of improvements to track details on maps.

Some good news with the switch to Topo50 is that changes and updates are likely to get into the mapping system much more rapidly. With its overhaul of mapping systems, LINZ also completely changed the way it publishes maps. Pre-processing is now all done in-house, such that LINZ can now run off a new map edition soon after updating their system. It won’t take existing maps with errors off the shelves, but it could mean that new orders from retailers sent to replace them have corrections. Previously, new editions only came out every decade or so, and each map had to be manually re-plotted and carefully examined (which is why some maps had inconsistent shadings), and was probably pre-printed in large numbers.

Hopefully the ability to correct maps more quickly will also lead to more people submitting corrections. There are enough people out tramping with good GPS devices these days that getting accurate positions of the tracks is becoming much easier, as long as you can trust the person providing the data, and trusting the data may be the most difficult part. For instance, I’m now trying to digitally track every time I go out for a walk, but just because my GPS has been somewhere doesn’t mean it’s a track. My GPS stops and starts, it takes short-cuts, it ventures off-track to look at interesting things, and sometimes it just leaves the track completely because there is no formed track to wherever my GPS wants to go. When I return, I don’t always have a reliable memory of exactly when I was and wasn’t on a track, or the standard of that track, but then that’s not my main motivation for digitally recording where I’ve been. I guess time will tell.

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.

He might have sold his story to a trashy women’s magazine (or to a trashy Sunday newspaper), but instead he’s written it up in detail for all to read and learn from, over at the New Zealand Tramper website. What he’s created is a first-hand account from someone well qualified in the New Zealand back-country, which is actually very educational about what can go wrong, how to deal with it, how mistakes can occur, and what it’s like to have to cope with the media after something like this. It’s published in five parts:

• Part One
• Part Two
• Part Three
• Part Four
• Part Five

It’s definitely worth a read. There’s also been an ongoing discussion about the event in the NZ Tramper forums.

The story from the Dominion Post is available on Stuff.

The wreckage was taken illegally in March by Wairarapa Helicopters following a commissioning by the Sport and Vintage Aviation Society for a new museum being built. After discussions with the families of the pilots who died and were buried nearby, the helicopter company has now agreed to return the wreckage, with an agreement that DOC won’t revoke its permit to operate in the park. It seems there will be no prosecution.

This is good news. The plane wreck has been on the side of Shingle Slip Knob since 1955, clearly visible from one of the most frequented tramps in the Tararuas (The Jumbo/Powell loop). Perhaps it was decided that prosecution of either or both organisations would not accomplish much or might work out worse for everyone. I still have trouble believing that nobody involved could have realised that it was most likely illegal to simply fly into the Tararuas and take things, or that nobody would notice, or that nobody would have a problem with it being done.

Apparently they had no idea that they might be breaking some kind of law by fly into conservation land and taking things! I’m not sure why — if I wanted to reconstruct a New Zealand back-country hut for a museum in my back yard, would it be okay for me to fly in with a helicopter and take that from conservation land too? Perhaps the leave-it-as-you-found-it rule isn’t quite so obvious for people who don’t spend a lot of time in or near New Zealand’s conservation land.

It sounds as if it was some kind of misunderstanding and I haven’t exactly figured out what I think about this at the moment. Supposedly DOC’s lawyers and the families of the pilots will decide what happens next.

There seems to be a continuing discussion about this issue over at the NZ Tramper website.

The Tararua Range is dotted with plane wrecks which make up much of the history of the region. A particular one of these wrecks is very well known to people who visit the area, as it’s clearly visible from Mt Holdsworth and the surrounding ridges. It seems that recently, this wreck has been raided and major parts of it have been stolen for unknown reasons.

The Shingle Slip Knob wreck of 1955 is clearly visible from the ridge between Jumbo and Holdsworth along the popular Jumbo/Holdsworth loop. (This photo from December 2006.)

According to the linked article from the Dominion Post, an unidentified helicopter was seen making three trips to the wreckage, and further investigations have now found that the plane’s engine has been taken, and other parts have been moved to other places for easier removal.

From the linked article:

The wreckage of a plane strewn near the gravesites of two pilots killed in the crash in the Tararua Range more than 50 years ago has been stripped in an act damned by the Conservation Department “as daylight robbery”.

“In the past week, parts of the plane’s remains, which are now owned by the Crown, have been whisked away and other sections have been moved into clearings for easier removal.

[--snip--]

Tramper Barry Durrant told The Dominion Post he saw a red and white Hughes 500 helicopter make three trips to the site of the wreckage last Friday.

The Department of Conservation staff who administer the park are fairly dismayed, and I don’t blame them. So am I. It’s disrespectful to the pilots who died in the accident, and it’s disrespectful to everyone who enjoys the history of the Tararua Range.

Update 8-3-2009, 9pm: There’s a conversation thread about this topic running over at New Zealand Tramper.