PROTECTING AN ICON

Forest and Bird, Volume 22, Issue 2, 1 May 1991, Page 36

PROTECTING AN ICON

by

Neville Peat

Forest and Bird has recently proposed the creation of a Remarkables Conservation Park.

S FAR AS photogenic mountain ranges go, the Remarkables are tops — an upright, sky-piercing backdrop that features in every Queenstown tourist's photo collection. Queenstown without the Remarkables is as unthinkable as New Zealand without the kiwi. Well named, the mountain range enjoys icon status. Yet within the country’s parks and reserves system it currently holds the lowest status — "stewardship land". For scenic and landscape quality alone, the Remarkables have long enjoyed rave reviews — and not only from tourists.

Absorbing grandeur

Back in 1908, an Otago University geologist, Professor James Park, wrote of the "absorbing grandeur’ of these mountains. In this respect, he said, they were unrivalled. But their stunning form as viewed from Queenstown — an immense rock wall, evenly puckered, capped in jagged glory and rising 2,000 metres from the shores of Lake Wakatipu — is only part of the absorbing story of the Remarkables. The range and adjacent country is built of schist and shaped, to a large extent, by ice. A glacier once filled the Wakatipu basin, and its grinding impact plus fault movement in the

bedrock have contributed to the ruggedness of the terrain. The geological features today include schist tors, hanging valleys, armchair cirques, earth terraces and mysterious stone drains. These drains, lined at the bottom with stones, may exceed 150 metres in length. Their precise origin is unknown, but the alpine climate, past or present, particularly the action of severe frost in between periods of thaw, is said to be implicated.

Lakes and tarns

Behind the great western wall and the big lake at its foot lies a dissected alpine landscape dotted by many little lakes and tarns left behind by the glaciation — some 60 in all. Lake Alta (1,830 metres), nestled under the range's highest peak, Double Cone (2,324 metres) in the headwaters of the Rastus Burn, is dammed by moraine in one of the best examples of an armchair cirque. To the south, Lake Hope, the source of the South Branch of Wye Creek, occupies another cirque. Adding hugely to the scientific intrigue here is the location of the Remarkables in the transition zone between the glaciated Alps and western rainforests and the relatively dry and subdued Central Otago region, comprising

blockfaulted mountains, high tablelands and intervening basins. The biota of the Remarkables is influenced from both east and west. Some invertebrates are thought to be unique to the area. Certainly there are combinations of plants that are unique. Botanist Dr Alan Mark co-authored a major report on the area in the 1970s that pointed out how special it was to find several of the larger and more colourful alpine Main Divide species have their eastern limit here (including Ranunculus buchananii, Parahebe birleyi, Anisotome capillifolia, Celmisia petiolata and the snow patch tussock, Chionochloa oreophila), living in close proximity to cushion plants typical of the Central Otago uplands. But perhaps the most striking feature of the plant life of the Remarkables is its diversity, with the various communities separated by altitude and topography. The mosaic includes snow tussock, snowbanks, wetlands, cushion fields, herbfields, fellfields, boulderfields and at lower altitudes remnant mountain beech forest.

Near-record elevations

Snow tussock is the most extensive vegetation type, ranging up to near-record elevations over 1,900 metres. Above about 1,200 metres the tall narrow-leafed snow tussock Chionochloa rigida is replaced by the less-lofty slim snow tussock Chionochloa macra, which tends to merge with blue tussock Pod colensoi at its upper limits or end abruptly at stony fellfield. In upper Wye Creek, snowbanks adjoining the several large tarns carry the only known colonies of snow patch tussock on the range, here at its eastern limit. Indeed Wye Creek holds special interest for botanists. Regenerating mountain beech covers lower reaches of the valley and a sequence of subalpine scrub, snow tussock, herbfield and fellfield vegetation follows on upwards. DSIR botanists Ralph Allen and Bill Lee, in a report to the Department of Lands and Survey in 1986, said the vegetation sequence of Wye Creek was the most complete in the

whole Remarkables ecological district (which takes in surrounding ranges). The Wye, they said, had "exceptional biological values", and they attributed the high species diversity of the Wye to the absence of grazing since the mid-1970s. Alpine plant specialist Neill Simpson, of the Department of Conservation Queenstown office, has made a comprehensive study of the Remarkables and points out a number of.

special features, including the presence of the rare cress Ischnocarpus novae-zelandiae. Bird life on the range is characteristic of the Central Otago high country. The beech forest — and to some extent the scrubland above it — provides habitat for fantail, grey warbler, silvereye, tit and bellbird. Higher up and breeding on the range are banded dotterel, South Island pied oystercatcher and blackbacked gulls.

Kea commotion

Limited numbers of kea, at their eastern limit here, and New Zealand falcons patrol the tops. The kea caused a commotion in the mid-1980s. They were said to be causing too much damage to skifield equipment being erected in the Rastus Burn. The five local birds were removed (reportedly to the North Island) but such was the uproar from Forest and Bird and others over this issue that five replacement kea, from Closeburn Station further up Lake Wakatipu, were released and the skifield operators just had to learn to live with these unique parrots and their prying beaks. Invertebrate life in the Remarkables provoked the comment from entomologist John Dugdale in the 1970s that "endemism is rife". Invertebrates here, as in most alpine areas, tend to be relatively large. There are giant weevils, including Lyperobius spedeni, which -live on native members of the carrot family including various speargrass species, and large diurnal chafer beetles which are at home on a variety of cushion plants. Alpine cicadas, wetas and grasshoppers are also large and, in the case of one grasshopper, distinctly hairy.

Brian Patrick and Brian Lyford, in a recent study of moths and butterflies, have found at least two endemic species in a recorded list of 320 native moths (paper in press, NZ Entomologist). The rarer species live in the highalpine zone. A full study of the natural and conservation values of the Remarkables Ecological District, in the context of the Protected Natural Areas Programme, has yet to be made, but there is no doubting, on the strength of studies done to date, that the Remarkables is brimming with interest. Alan Mark, in a recent proposal for a

146,000 hectare Central Otago Conservation Park based on results of recent PNA surveys of the adjacent Old Man, Nokomai and Umbrella Ecological Districts, has recommended the inclusion of 87,000 hectares from the Remarkables District. On the recreation side, the Remarkables have long been a destination for trampers and climbers. Before the skifield road provided motor access to the Rastus Burn, Lake Alta, with its adjacent rock bivvy, was a popular stopping place for climbers en route to Double Cone. Nowadays, for summer visitors who come

by car, Lake Alta is a gentle stroll from the skifield car park by way of a newly-formed trail. And the keener foot recreationists now aim for remoter parts of the area, including the upper reaches of Wye Valley. To the south lie other destinations, Ben Nevis (2,240 metres), Lake Hope and Staircase Creek. Doc Summer holiday programmes regularly include trips to Lake Alta and a tramp into the Wye Valley via a new track through the beech forest. Winter heliskiing ventures into the Remarkables have been available since the 1970s.

The Mount Cook Group's Remarkables Skifield in the Rastus Burn catchment, 10 km from Queenstown, opened in 1985. It offers three chairlifts, one of which was used in the early years of the skifield to transport summer visitors most of the way to a dramatic lookout over the Wakatipu Basin from the brink of the western face. The Remarkables may appear prime country for parapenting and hang-gliding but the fact is these aerial forms of recreation are prohibited within three nautical miles (5.5 km) of Frankton Airport. That rules out launching from the western face.

Recreation potential

Although the bulk of visitors to Queenstown are content to admire the Remarkables from a distance, and keep contact confined to celluloid, the potential surely exists for increased walking, tramping and climbing in this now easily accessible and superb alpine landscape. An elevated status for the Remarkables in New Zealand's protected areas system seems

likely in 1991 (See box). The creation of a conservation park would not only acknowledge the compelling landscape and natural values of the Remarkables; it would also underline the need for adequately protecting representative areas of tussock mountainland throughout the South Island rangeland in the rain shadow of the Main Divide. Tussock — call it low-lying forest if you like

— harbours its own unique plant an animal communities, and representative areas of it have as much right to protection as, say, kauri forests, glaciers and beaches. Twenty percent of New Zealand was once under tussock. About half of it is left, and of that, only a tiny fraction of it is formally protected.