Precious Places

Forest and Bird, Issue 291, 1 February 1999, Unnumbered Page

Precious Places

GORDON ELL,

There is a need for + more, national parks ~ to recognise the ~- variety of our

Forest and

Bird nominee on the New Zealand Conservation Authority, believes our national park system is still lop-sided.

hen New Zealand decided in 1986 to protect its wild places within a conservation estate, it gained an opportunity to redress a notable imbalance in our system of national parks. These ‘lands apart’, while outstanding for their natural values, tended to protect only the most difficult and distant country; places which, quite frankly, were often useless for anything else. The idea of protecting the best of our wilderness and wildlife, in a national park system celebrating New Zealand’s diverse natural heritage, simply wasn’t practicable until the formation of the Department of Conservation. Consequently, national parks to this day tend to be more distant from centres of population than other reserves, and are generally rather heavily weighted towards protecting steepland forests and mountain tops while neglecting other natural systems of great value. Still notably absent from our system of national parks are the tussock grasslands of the southern mountains, with their spacious geography and striking herbfields; any examples of the subtropical forests of the warmer north which have a diversity of species well-exceeding those of the cooler regions; or many examples of our won-

drous coasts and offshore islands. In addition, significant remnants of our onceextensive, lowland forests — the type most seriously depleted by human settlement, forestry and farming- are retained by the Department of Conservation often as ‘stewardship lands, meaning they have only the lowest level of protective status. The shape of New Zealand’s national park system was largely set in the days when two giant Government departments, Lands and Survey and the Forest Service, controlled the Crown estate. Crown lands controlled by Lands and Survey were eligible for national park status under their own act while forestry lands, including some of the finest forests in New Zealand, were only marginally protected in a system of forest parks. Duties laid on these departments to develop the wilderness meant tens of thousands of hectares of what is now protected land were continually at risk of milling, burning or settlement. While Lands and Survey maintained a national parks division, it also had a land-development division clearing native shrublands, converting tussockland into pasture, and draining wetlands. The Forest Service, while protecting some outstanding trees in Forest Sanctuaries, continued to fell native trees in production forests. When the Department of Conservation inherited the conservation lands of both departments in 1986, it inherited a lop-sided system of reserves and immediately created a backlog of candidates for national park status. The more notable candidates were inherited from the Forest Service, including the northwest Nelson region, the kauri forests of Northland, and extensive forests in the hill-

country abutting the Whanganui National Park. Creating Kahurangi National Park was an early priority. Attempts were also made to establish a kauri national park in Northland, and to add further forests which would virtually double the size of the Whanganui National Park. Both these latter proposals met the Section 8 criteria of the National Parks Act, confirming they are of national park quality, but no further progress has been made because of a number of outstanding Maori claims over these areas under the Treaty of Waitangi process. T= is no shortage of information about the best wild places in New Zealand, so the technical side of putting together a new national park proposal is not too difficult. The hard work is the door-to-door salesmanship (advocacy) and consideration (consultation) required in negotiations with local communities; also the politics of dealing with developmental interests, including miners, and Government ministries such as Energy and Commerce. The creation in 1995 of the Kahurangi National Park, New Zealand’s secondlargest, involved talking with local people about their fears of change, and making considerate adjustments to existing reserve boundaries where community hardship might have resulted from the upgrading of protective status. Industry lobbies shaped the boundaries too, including goldmining interests which succeeded in having Sams Creek excluded from the park. The consultation process was punctuated by claims that turning ‘stewardship land’ into national park meant local folk would never ‘get it back’ for development. In several communities there persisted a

view that stewardship land was their potential frontier country, only temporarily allocated from forestry or land development into stewardship land while the new Department of Conservation sorted out its priorities. Conservation cannot afford such ambiguities: if land has high conservation values these needs to be recognised under one of the many protective classifications developed for this purpose over the past 100 years or more. National parks are simply the highest classification in a suite of possibilities. For example, Forest and Bird has advocated upgrading several other areas to higher protective status as conservation parks, including the establishment of a Tongariro Conservation Park to protect lowland forests in the central North Island, and a high-country grassland park mooted for the inland slopes of Mount Torlesse. The shopping list for new parks is influenced by the need to recognise areas with appropriate status, and sometimes to correct the mistakes of the past. Opposition to the establishment of the Paparoa National Park, for example, led to its trimming to a coastal frontage while excluding other publicly owned land rising to the mountains inland. A case could be made for extending these boundaries to recognise the back-country. Mountains and forests inland from Westport were excluded from the investigation for the Kahurangi National Park following pressure from development lobbies. There has been subsequent talk of recognising this whole region, from the Paparoa Ranges north to Farewell Spit, as a World Heritage Area; recognising the rich natural heritage surviving from the ancient super-continent of Gondwana, which has remnants here dating

back 150 million years or more. The main reasons there have been so few determined efforts to redress the imbalances in our national park system stem from a lack of will, generally expressed by officials as a lack of money to go through the investigative stages required by law. On those few occasions when Governments have been determined to establish parks and reserves, activity has been remarkably accelerated. This is why the enthusiasm of the Prime Minister, Jenny Shipley, for a national park on Stewart Island needs to be taken seriously. The Department of Conservation can now embrace a long-discussed possibility in its business planning, and the local conservation board is able to get to work. Stewart Island with its rich forests and wildlife is a prime prospect for national park status. Its granite mountains, senescent rivers, its long harbours and wild coasts present landscapes ‘so beautiful’ that the island could qualify as national park in visual terms alone. There are several examples from this Government where Ministerial determination — driven by the priorities established by New Zealand First in the Coalition Agreement — has produced comparatively rapid action. The story of the recent addition to Fiordland National Park of an area larger than Egmont National Park, is told on page 6 of this journal. The case for this "Waitutu addition’ dates back to the 1930s: in the 1980s Forest and Bird successfully conducted a substantial campaign to have the area assessed as a national park but it has taken till now to formalise it. Notable changes driven by Dr Nick Smith as Minister of Conservation also include the proposal to add the coastal foreshores to

Abel Tasman National Park, and the Hauraki Gulf Marine Park Bill. Both pick up on major conservation issues in the protection of land and waterways in unconventional ways, thus raising wider questions. How should we preserve the foreshores of other coastal reserves, and islands; and what of the possibilities for marine reserves? If the Abel Tasman foreshore is worthy of national park status what of the waters of Fiordland, with their outstanding wildlife and wilderness values? Again, if the management policies of the Hauraki Gulf Marine Park are to be driven, as proposed, by a forum of local body politicians, officials and Maori, what then should be the future management and protective status of other former maritime parks? Should we now be assessing the waters and public lands in the Marlborough Sounds and the Bay of Islands, as potential national parks or reserves, or support some political forum

to get regional interests working together for their better preservation? In some places, national park investigations have not been started because the local political climate is such that there is little prospect of success. On such grounds, officials refused to include the mountains and forests inland from Westport in the formal investigations for the Kahurangi National Park, lest opposition de-rail the process for the rest of the park. Yet times change, and with the successful transformation of the Haast area in South Westland, from a wholly extractive economy to one where tourism based on protected lands brings new business, it is possible that attitudes in the Buller region may in time come to recognise the potential of tourism based on national parks. It is already time to look at the national park potential of the Haast forests, south of the Cook River, an area of lowland podocarp and beech forest recognised in 1989 by Unesco as having World Heritage

values. By definition this is a place so special that it deserves protection as part of a natural area of international significance, but in the hierarchy of New Zealand public lands it has only the lowliest protective status — stewardship land. The Haast forests received their international status as part of Te Wahi Pounamu/the Southwest New Zealand World Heritage Area, which extends a blanketing coat of protection over a vast area of the South Island, including the national parks of Fiordland, Mt Aspiring, Westland and Aoraki/Mt Cook Previously managed by the old Forest Service, the Haast forests obviously had the necessary values to meet international criteria, providing a coastal fringe of swamp forests, longshore dunes, and sweeping vistas up into the mountain fastnesses of Mt Aspiring and the Southern Alps. While conservation was unpopular in southern Westland 10 years ago, the remarkable success of tourism in giving a new heart

to the local economy has led to changing attitudes. Deciding the national park values of the Haast region could be comparatively simple; consultation now should not be anywhere near as difficult as it was for the World Heritage case a decade ago. S ome initiatives to create national parks come from local communities. During the 1980s, an application to establish a national park in the Kaimai-Mamaku region of Bay of Plenty failed to get the support of the National Parks Authority but there have been subsequent suggestions regarding parts of the contiguous Coromandel Ranges, and their extension on Great Barrier Island. A Kaikoura-based promotion to establish a national park along the Seaward Kaikoura range has lately led the Conservation Authority to seek a broader proposal from the Nelson-Marlborough Conservation Board reviewing all the Marlborough drylands. In brief, the idea is to recognise the outstanding areas of inland Marlborough in what might have to be a discontinuous national park, recognising the natural values of these drylands while excluding areas where farming practices and weed problems have degraded the landscape. Such a park could follow the precedent set during the investigation for the kauri national park which viewed the surviving trees as part of a cultural landscape where remnant islands of forest and gumland overlooked settled communities and_historic harbours, each reflecting a different

aspect of the northern forests. Thus in Marlborough such outstanding dryland habitats as the Kaikoura ranges could be combined with tussock basins, the Clarence Reserve, alpine lakes, forests and wild rivers. The current review of high-country pastoral tenure has been a spur to conservation interests in other eastern provinces of the South Island. As farmers get an opportunity to freehold their most productive land, portions of their leases with conservation values are being retained by the Crown for protection. From this stems opportunities to create high-country reserves, protecting the habitat of many specialised plant species, besides their attendant animals: localised butterflies, lizards, moths, grasshoppers; and the habitat of kea, falcon, and rock wren. There is also an increasing need for designated public access to these ‘tops’ a further justification for the establishment of new parks. Until the extent of available high country land becomes clear it is difficult to be sure what status these high country parks should have. It is not hard to imagine, however, that a system of well-spaced high-country parks in the South Island would help ensure the survival of their varied plants and animals, and protect outstanding high country landscapes, while making such areas more readily available for recreation. Bringing all the Crown’s conservation lands under one administration has ensured their ultimate protection, regardless of classification, and some have argued this is quite enough. Who cares whether an area is

classed as stewardship land, conservation park, nature reserve, recreational reserve, scenic reserve or scientific reserve — as long as it is protected? Yet these various categories, and the hierarchy which rises to national parks or national reserves (smaller in area), was established because these classifications reflect the comparative values we place on our wilderness. The anomalies of valuable lands held only in ‘stewardship’ points up the need to look again at the status of our most precious places. The absence of proper recognition for key wilderness areas frustrates those who believe our national park system should be more representative of national conservation values. While officials argue that classification as a national park won't necessarily attract more funds, the title certainly gives a higher profile to the designated land. With the conferral of national park status, the purposes of management necessarily alter. There is a lower tolerance of poor maintenance. Pests and weeds have to be dealt with. Nature has to come first. Ultimately, an area worthy of national park status attracts more attention, and that must ultimately lead to better care. Our national park system may be superb but, if it is to preserve the full range of our wilderness values, we now need to extend it. GORDON ELL has been involved in several national park proposals, as a former national president of Forest and Bird, and as a member of the New Zealand Conservation Authority.

A NATIONAL PARK ‘SHOPPING LIST’

Here is short list of areas which have been suggested either for national park status, or as additions to existing national parks: ® Haast region, south of the Cook River @® Marlborough drylands, including Kaikoura Ranges, ® Maruia (inland north Westland) forests, ® Stewart Island, @ Great Barrier Island, Hauraki Gulf, ® the former maritime parks, ® the Fiordland coastal area, ® North Island lowland forests including Pureora and Whirinaki forests @ Extensions to Paparoa and Kahurangi national parks. Areas found to have national park values but presently ‘on hold’, awaiting the outcome of Treaty of Waitangi negotiations are: ® Northland kauri forests ® Whanganui National Park extensions