National Park review is now three years overdue

Sunday, 1 November 2020

Acheron Passage from Mt Clerke, Resolution Island, Dusky Sound in Fiordland National Park. The management plan for the park is now three years overdue.

A management plan for New Zealand's largest national park is now three years overdue and it has no start date in sight.

The current plan for the Fiordland National Park was completed in 2007 but it is required to be reviewed every 10 years, meaning work should have started in 2017.

Fiordland is one of seven national park management plans overdue throughout the country and none of them have start dates.

The plans set regulations and determine the permissions for operating in a park.

* Ngāi Tahu pull out of West Coast Conservation Board - again

* Controversial plans for Aoraki/Mt Cook National Park restarted

The Kepler Challenge takes place in year and makes for an incredibly scenic event as runners compete in the Fiordland National Park.

In September, the Southland Conservation Board wrote to the then conservation minister Eugenie Sage asking for resources to be allocated so the review could get under way.

Board chairman John Whitehead said it hoped the plan would have been reviewed when it was due three years ago.

Fiordland is listed as third in priority out of the seven to be done.

He believed part of the delay was because the Department of Conservation was restructured in 2013, which meant a lot of planning staff were lost, and it had never caught up with the work.

Since 2007, technology and tourism had changed substantially and an example of that was drones and the popularity of mountain biking.

Drones were a thing that didn’t exist in 2007 and was something that was difficult to gain a concession for as it was classified as an aircraft, he said.

E-Bikes had also created a boost in the popularity of mountain biking, however it seemed half of the population wanted to see it included in the park while the other half didn’t, he said.

Whitehead and his board believe there is an opportunity to preserve the park but still give tourism operators guidance on permissible activities. But it can't give long-term options until the review starts and the new plan is completed.

The other hold up that appears to have created a backlog with DOC on the reviews is a Supreme Court decision relating to Ngāi Tai Ki Tamaki case.

In 2018, Ngāi Tai won the case in which it claimed that DOC was not upholding its treaty obligations under the Conservation Act by granting concession to Fullers and the Motutapu Island Restoration Trust to operate in the Hauraki Gulf.

Since then the Aoraki/Mount Cook and Westland Tai Poutini management plans were put on hold in 2019. They are both ahead of Fiordland to be done.

Sage acknowledged the Southland Conservation Board’s desire for the Fiordland review to be prioritised.

Sage said the Ngāi Tai decision had implications to national park plans and how DOC implemented Treaty of Waitangi obligations under the Conservation Act.

The New Zealand Conservation Authority was also working with DOC to improve the overall management planning process and time frames, she said.

Sir Tipene O’Regan says the Department of Conservation along with the understanding of the Conservation Act's treaty obligation is its biggest challenge to protecting Ngāi Tahu heritage.

She had highlighted then need for DOC to overhaul and improvement management processes and championing this should be the priority for the incoming minister.

At a Murihiku regeneration meeting in Invercargill in September, Ngāi Tahu Kaumātua Tā Tipene O’Regan said since the Conservation Act was passed it seemed bureaucrats were busy defining what section four of the Act did not mean.

That section states it must give effect to the principals of the Treaty of Waitangi.

His comments about interpretation was in relation to the Ngai Tai Ki Tamaki case, he said.

Department of Conservation director general Lou Sanson was also at the Invercargill meeting, when O’Regan appeared to single him out in his closing speech.

“Lou can't avoid us, and we can't avoid him.”

Speaking to Stuff in October, O’Regan said the decision of Ngāi Tai case made some important steps (to understanding treaty obligations) which brought a lot of DOC’s planning processes to something of a halt, and they were all put on hold.

Ngāi Tahu was actively negotiating on the Fiordland plan earlier in the year until Covid-19 hit, O'Regan said.

The Fiordland National Park was a considerable challenge, because there was a number of enterprises operating in the park with at least one operator holding a concession on Ngāi Tahu freehold land, he said.

“We are very anxious to make sure that at least as far as our freehold land is concerned, that we hold the concessions in them.”

Awarua Rūnanga had a deep interest in the southern end of the Fiordland National Park, and the two West Coast rūnanga had interests in the northern western side of the park to protect its heritage, he said.

“Basically, we are saying we own our memory and basically we are the primary proprietors of it, and we are interested in the preservation and care of those places in which those memories reside, we are happy to share it with the world, but we are its primary proprietors.”

Fiordland Trails Trust chairman John Greaney wants the review to start as soon as possible as it has had to halt developing cycle trails which have sections that go through the park.

Under the current plan cycling is not a prohibited activity.

Greaney felt it was really out of their control, and they could only put pressure on the stakeholders to get the review done.

It was not just them but other operators that were limited in what they could do under the current plan, he said.