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Forest & Bird » High Country

1. Gerry
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   There has been a revolution in nature protection and recreation in the high country over the last 8 years following the creation of a network of high country parks the length of the South Island. From the Eyre Mountains in SOuthland to the Seaward Kaikoura Range these new Parks are places anyone can visit and enjoy. They contain an extraordinary range of special native plants and animals many of which simply don't occur in our existing National Parks that are almost all located in the wet western ranges. Has anyone seen scree plants such as vegetable sheep, scree chickweed, fleshy Lobelia, the pink flowering mountain daisy of the Eyre Mountains? Or have you seen black ringlet butterflies on the screes, or the alpine weta that lives under rocks on mountain tops and freezes solid in the winter.These can all be found in the new Parks.

   The new Parks are there to be enjoyed and celebrated so get out there and do it!. Unfortunately there is huge pressure coming from some within the new Government led by Agriculture Minister David Carter arguing against DOC having responsibility for high country land that was formerly in pastoral lease. A view is being advanced that DOC's role should be reduced in the high country and instead of tenure review splitting leasehold land between nature protection land and farmland, the QE2 Trust should sign up high country farmers to "Whole Property Covenants" that give them some vague responsibility to look after nature and control recreational use. If you want to see how that approach works or actually doesn't work, go to Molesworth in Marlborough. This 176,000hectares of DOC land is virtually all subserviant to Landcorp's beef cattle. In April 2009 we even found cows inside a lovely remnant of beech forest, rare plants and shrubland that had been partially fenced off by DOC to exclude cows! Molesworth is also very, very difficult to access for much of the year.

   I'd welcome thought on how easy readers have found accessing the new parks compared to previous pastoral lease land and whether you are seeing changes in native plants with the exclusion of stock.

   Posted 2 years ago #

2. Helen
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   Have been enjoying your posts on various topics Gerry. Do you think horses will be allowed in some high country parks? (to ride through that is, not let loose!) I like the idea of being able to go on a long-distance high country trek, but would this be possible without causing harm to the environment (given proper management)?

   Posted 2 years ago #

3. Gerry
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   Thanks Helen for the question. To my knowledge all the new High Country Parks encourage visits by people on horseback. North Canterbury's Lake Sumner Forest Park and St James Station (that is presently being managed by DOC as if it was a Park pending public discussion of management options) are both the centrepiece of popular horse trekking routes both by recreational horse trekkers and by commercial guided horse treks. I went to the Eyre Mountains Park opening in Southland 3 years ago and the Conservation Minister arrived on horseback to open the new Park as did many of the Southland locals there that day.

   The key feature of the Parks is that they are sanctuaries for the unique biodiversity of the drier eastern high country and they are open to everyone. It has always bugged me over 40 years of climbing and tramping in the high country how many pastoral lease areas that are gateways to huge DOC areas controlled recreation access on a "entry by priviledge only" basis. There are a number of properties where access has never been a problem. There are many others though where access has always been problematic. On these properties it seemed that if you knew the right people or were well connected or went to the right school you got in, if you didn't you were denied access. The denial was often done very discretely...there were always ewes lambing, a muster going on, another party already hunting or fishing the block. The end result was though that it was usually the young hunters who missed out on access yet these are the very ones who need to be encouraged to ensure the future of the sport. This is a big reason why the NZ Deerstalkers Assn have been so enthusiastic about the new Parks and they strongly supported Forest and Birds Campaign for the new parks laaunched 4 years ago called "A Six Pack of Parks"

   It is fantastic that the goals of that campaign 4 years on have largely been realised. Sadly we now all need to fight to hang on to the Parks because they are under threat from the Minister of Agriculture's current Review of High COuntry Land Management. They are also threatened by the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment's recent call for a review of the High Country Parks. She thinks that they are a luxury we cannot afford yet admits that she has biked the Otago Rail Trail 4 times and is exactly the sort of new visitor to the high country that the new Parks are encouraging. These new visitors are bringing substantial economic benefits to ther high country and the Parliamentary Commissioner concedes this.

   Posted 2 years ago #

4. auckland anne
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   Gerry, are there any relatively simple steps that members of the general public can take to help with protecting public access to the High Country? How can we up here in the north help most with this campaign?

   Posted 2 years ago #

5. Helen
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   The public access situation is interesting - as a horse rider I have often asked permission to ride on rural properties (just highly modified enviornments of farms, nothing threatened!) and farmers have almost always been fine and said yes. But with more subdivision into lifestyle blocks it is getting much harder to find places to ride (roads are not good as too many crazy people drive at high speed within millimetres of you). I can understand farmers' reluctance to just allow willy-nilly without permission people wanting to shoot and bring dogs on to their properties, or people who leave gates open, maybe even scope the place out to nick stuff, etc. I think we need to find a balance that lets land-owners have some control over their own safety and security but also allows the public to enjoy recreation wherever possible. I guess that is where high country parks come in!

   Posted 2 years ago #

6. Gerry
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   Anne. The best support that everyone can give to the Parks is to let the politicians that are making decisions about the high country know that these special places are valued. Valued not just by the small group of people who live in or close to the high country, but also by people who live throughout NZ.You can write to the Mnister of Conservation tim.groser@ministers.govt.nz and the Prime Minister/Minister of Tourism john.key@ministers.govt.nz and let them know. remember it wasn't the people just from the West Coast who saved the ancient rainforests of the West Coast from logging(half the remaining native forest in NZ). It was also North island and Auckland people who helped save these wonderful forests by their expressions of support for conservation.

   Thanks for your great support.

   Posted 2 years ago #

7. Gerry
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   I thought that Green Room readers might like to read about this perspective on High Country nature conservation and the Ahuriri Conservation Park near Omarama.

   The contribution is from Gerry Eckoff former ACT MP and is an excerpt from an article he wrote in ACT's Muriel Newmans latest newsletter.

   It would be good to get some responses.

   Conservation

   This whole debacle over the foreshore and seabed provides a stark example of how governments can find themselves so involved in appeasing vocal minority groups that they all too often marginalise the majority in the process. Unfortunately this is also a common occurrence in the realm of conservation, where over the years environmental activists have successfully railed against private sector involvement in conservation efforts, to the detriment of all New Zealanders.

   This weeks’ NZCPT Guest Commentator is regional councillor and conservationist Gerry Eckhoff, a high country farmer and former MP who has long advocated private sector involvement in the preservation of endangered species. He explains:

   “The DoC Estate is the place where our land goes to die; proclaims a billboard north of Roxburgh. The Lindis Pass Scenic Reserve in Central Otago contains a truly unique tussock landscape which is slowly but surely dying due to neglect. This once vibrant and productive area had long ago been turned into a “protected natural area”, administered by the Department of Conservation. The colour grey now replaces the tawny brown of the tussock grassland as this landscape slides silently into the death throes despite the “protection” of the Crown. The removal of stock (sheep and cattle) was deemed by DoC to ensure the survival of the indigenous vegetation. They were wrong…. again.

   “The Ahuriri River, home to the highly endangered black stilt flows nearby. The Black Stilts’ survival depends on the removal of cattle from the nesting area - opined the Department, so the cattle were removed. Numbers of the stilt crashed until somebody from DoC finally understood that the Black Stilt depended on the cattle dung beetles for food. Something the locals had known for years.

   “These two examples highlight the “we the Crown know best attitude” and the public’s entrenched belief that the survival of the species depends on production and conservation being mutually exclusive. The evidence is increasingly showing that far from being mutually exclusive the two are in fact mutually dependant. With money and expertise from the productive sector there would be opportunity to seek to preserve the many values we all share”.

   Posted 2 years ago #

8. auckland anne
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   NZCPT must've been really desperate to find someone available to be their guest commentator this week...

   Anyway, why ruin a good story with the truth? I didn't realise before Gerry E told us, that the theory that production and conservation are mutually exclusive was so deeply entrenched "in the public". But then, just cos the crown doesn't always know what's best for things conservation, doesn't mean that the crown doesn't know best about what everyone's thinking I guess.

   Posted 2 years ago #

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