Tourism staff restoring backcountry huts with Jobs for Nature funding

Thursday, 3 September 2020

Rafting guide Tim Marshal, owner of Ultimate Descents New Zealand has been working on the East Matakitaki Hut

Murchison rafting guide Tim Marshall was meant to be in China this year helping to set up a rafting business before returning home to run his own guiding company on West Coast rivers.

Covid-19 sunk both of those plans and Marshall, who has more than 20 years experience as a rafting guide, said bookings for his Murchison-based rafting company Ultimate Descents New Zealand had all but disappeared by the end of March.

”As soon as the borders closed we lost a lot of bookings, before the country went into level four we were already hurting and we closed our doors.”

Now a $2 million expansion of the Backcountry Trust programme to repair and maintain remote huts as part of the Government’s $1.3 billion Jobs for Nature fund from has kept Marshall and his crew in work, while ensuring some of New Zealand’s “classic Kiwi tramping huts” will be preserved for generations to come.

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An aerial photograph of the East Matakitaki Hut in the Nelson Lakes National Park.

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Rafting guides Tommy Maru, left, Sonny Jim, Marty Bisdee and Tim Marshall working on the East Matakitaki Hut.

Marshall and three other guides have spent the last four days working on the East Matakitaki Hut, a six-bunk hut perched on a grassy flat on the banks of the east branch of the Matakitaki River, near Murchison.

Outside the hut in the Nelson Lakes National Park on Wednesday, Conservation Minister Eugenie Sage announced the funding to repair and maintain huts, tracks and bridges in some of New Zealand’s more remote places as a key part of the Covid-19 economic recovery package.

The announcement meant Marshall has been able to keep several of his employees in work.

Backcountry Trust manager Rob Brown at the East Matakitaki Hut in Nelson Lakes National Park.

”Not only losing our bookings at the end of the season and losing three-months worth of work in China during winter, this has been perfect for us.”

The crew were flown into the national park on Sunday to repair the former forest service hut which was built in 1961. The men managed to get a new roof on the hut before it started snowing on Tuesday and the old roofing iron was repurposed as cladding for a new wood shed nearby.

It is the first of several contracts that will keep Marshall and his crew busy during what will be a quieter than usual rafting season.

Andrea Goodman, Kea Conservation Trust with lead-head nails removed from the East Matakitaki Hut.

”With the borders closed, domestic tourism will be more weekend work for us and it is going to be hard to hold onto staff members and pay the bills.

”If we can pick up this sort of work, where we have a week away renovating a hut we can plan around it.”

”Part of our work is guiding people through remote wilderness areas in the Kahurangi, Karamea, Mokihinui and Buller and we are used to being in this environment, it is what we love and it is good to be able to give something back to these huts.”

There are more than 950 huts across New Zealand in the DOC estate and the Backcountry Trust has a long-term partnership with the Department of Conservation to help maintain the network of tracks and huts in remote areas.

Department of Conservation Rotoiti / Nelson Lakes operations manager John Wotherspoon.

Sage said the funding would help to sustain people, like the rafting guides from Ultimate Descents, to use their outdoor skills to do valuable work in maintaining and restoring huts.

Around 108 contract jobs will be created through the Backcountry Trust, in areas where the downturn in tourists due to Covid-19 has had a major impact on the local economy, including the West Coast, Canterbury and Wanaka.

There are already several huts in the region lined up for restoration, the next on the list is Bob's Hut which is located further downstream and was one of the first to be built in the area in 1958 after the Nelson Lakes National Park was established in 1956.

Backcountry Trust manager Rob Brown said it had been working to restore remote tramping huts for the last six years and had completed over 150 restorations since then.

It received some funding from DOC for its volunteer programme but the $2m funding boost would “radically expand” the number of huts it could work on.

Brown said New Zealanders were passionate about preserving backcountry huts.

“If you look through the hut book, there are so many people that have come through here and have stories to tell about this part of the park, and we are just really keen to keep those opportunities open for the next generation.”

On Wednesday, Sage also announced the Kea Conservation Trust would receive $179,040 from the DOC Community Fund to continue its work protecting New Zealand's native alpine parrots.

Trust community engagement co-ordinator Andrea Goodman said the money would be used to continue education and advocacy work, mitigating risks to kea as well as working with DOC to identify and remove lead-head nails and lead flashings from old huts, reducing the risk of kākā and kea getting lead poisoning,

As part of the work on the East Matakitaki Hut, the crew removed all lead-headed nails and flashings.

Department of Conservation Nelson Lakes operations manager John Wotherspoon said backcountry huts were often the last on the list for maintenance.

“They are the ones we tend to get to last as we need to concentrate on the ones in the high country that are often visited, and these ones we get to when we can and when things need to be done.”

Huts like the East Matakitaki were “classic Kiwi tramping huts”.

“It’s brilliant to get this sort of work done.”