Whirinaki tourism

Forest and Bird, Issue 280, 1 May 1996, Page 42

Whirinaki tourism

ORMER JOURNALIST Chris Birt started in the ecotourism business with rafting tours down the Mohaka River in the early-1980s. But a long-term fascination with Whirinaki Forest and the local Tuhoe people of the Urewera, led to an application to run a commercial trekking operation using a base camp in the little-visited Okahu valley on the eastern side of the forest park. Despite some opposition to the application, he obtained a concession with the help of eminent biologist and conservationist Professor John Morton who was then on the park advisory committee. Most of Birt’s publicity is now directed overseas, and he is not expecting good returns for some three years. Birt sees his particular trade niche as providing a forest experience combined with a Maori cultural one — a combination that’s hard to get in the South Island. The two-day treks end with a hangi at the Murumurunga marae but it is no mere tack-on Maori experience for tourists. Birt

has also put considerable effort into training members of the local Ngati Whare as guides for the tour operation so that visitors can be introduced to the forest by its tangata whenua. "If ever a Maori community is still interacting with nature it is the Ngati Whare people of Whirinaki," says Birt who has been assiduous in cultivating a good relationship with the people of this hapu of the Tuhoe tribe. Minginui (population less than 300) is essentially an enclave in the park. With the final closure of its mill in 1988, and the relocation of the DoC field centre up the road to Murupara, more than 90 percent of the village workforce are unemployed. Keen that tourist operations within the park are "more than just tour buses from Rotorua with passengers not even knowing that people live here," Birt has put his guides through pre-employment, first aid and Kiwi Host courses as well as training in the ecology of the forest and the business of managing people in the bush.