Asked about finances available to cover the cost of fire, Mr Young said Doc carried a whole raft of insurance and it was ''well covered''.
Lincoln University emeritus professor Kevin O'Connor said discourse was needed in New Zealand about land and land use, and on properties like Birchwood and others retired from pastoral use.
Different people had to talk together with an emphasis on listening and learning from one another. There needed to be an understanding that ''other people may think differently''.
He believed Birchwood had a very modest value for pastoral production, a high value for nature conservation and a very high value for natural area-based recreation.
Forest and Bird field officer Jen Miller said it was ''how we see the place''. Landowners, whose lives had been about productive use, might look at Birchwood, think it looked ''dreadful'', that it should be grazed and cite a fire risk.
A conservationist might look at it and see the beech forest starting to spread out and the cocksfoot depleting in time.
The challenge was to come together and try to ''work out things'' while respecting each other's views.
Omarama man Peter Casserly said from a fishing point of view, there were still plenty of fish and those fishing the Ahuriri River ''really enjoy it''. But, it was a ''shame'' that such country had been taken out of production.
Some of the land that was ''going to waste'' should be put back into production, along with the ''right to roam'' on it.
Bill Thompson, from Healthy Soils, said he was yet to meet a farmer who was not a conservationist. He believed every farmer had his land ''at heart'' and wanted to conserve it.
Simon Williamson, previously from Birchwood and now farming Glenbrook Station, between Omarama and Twizel, said when it came to farmers and conservation groups, most of their values were the same.
He believed tenure review was going to ''veer away from where it is at the moment''. The Crown could not afford it and, when there was a system of win and lose, it was never going to win. It had to be a situation where there was ''win-win''. It was a matter of sitting down and working a way through it to ''get win-win''. Jim Morris, from neighbouring station Ben Avon, noted both tenure review and the sale of Birchwood were voluntary processes.
''Willing buyer, willing seller; what the buyer does is totally up to him,'' he said.
He believed tenure review had probably been the saving of a lot of hard high-country runs, saying the only time such places made money was when they were sold or went through tenure review.
It would be a shame if the tenure review process changed too much. Every farmer he knew that had gone through it was ''happy'' that they did, he said.
Federated Farmers national president Bruce Wills said he spent two or three days every week in Wellington, battling the delicate balance of economy and environment all around New Zealand.
Agriculture was the country's largest export earner by far but it had to be sustainable for generations. Collaboration was the ''way to go''.
Both he and the board of Federated Farmers were ''absolutely committed'' to ensuring they worked closely, positively and collaboratively ''with all those on the environment side'' and a lot of progress was being made.
Going back ''a year or two'', the only time Federated Farmers seemingly came across the Department of Conservation was wasting money on opposite sides of court rooms, battling on issues that both ''weren't far apart'' on.
He had been discussing with Doc director-general Al Morrison for ''quite some time'' the need to work in closer partnership with farmers.
He hoped that Doc and the farming community would work much more closely and collaboratively together.
He was encouraged by what he had seen in the past few years. Farmers were talking and thinking a lot more about the environment and he encouraged environmental groups to spend more time thinking and talking about the economy.
''We can't do one without the other,'' he said.
Ahuriri Conservation Park, of which Birchwood Station makes up about half, has been assessed as having a national economic value of $1.3 million annually.
Of that, about $480,000 was spent directly in the surrounding community, an economic impact assessment showed, Department of Conservation Twizel area manager Rob Young said.
It was potentially producing jobs in the community, revenue for people who provided the likes of accommodation, meals and fuel, and hopefully making people stay longer in the area, he said.
The purpose of the assessment was several-fold; it was partly about trying to persuade the Waitaki District Council that it should continue to maintain Birchwood Rd to the Birchwood homestead.
Once there were no ratepayers at the end of the road, the council had decided it should not be maintained past Ben Avon Station, further back down the valley. The report examined the disadvantages for visitors of not maintaining the road and how much that would reduce visits to the park.
Also, as it was one of the first conservation parks, Mr Young said he was keen to see what the economic value ''of a place like this'' was.
The number of visitors using the park went ''up and down'' but was between 5000 and 8000 each year.
Although it had climbed ''quite rapidly'' in the first two to three years, it now stayed ''pretty steady''.
A visitor survey in 2005-06 showed the main reason people visited Birchwood was to experience solitude.
The most significant group of users were aged between 35 and 65 and half the visitors came for a day, with the remainder staying for a longer period.
Nearly 50% came to go tramping, 13% fishing, 10% mountain biking and the rest were for ''a whole raft of other things''.
Conservation parks were different from national parks, which generally had restrictions on permitted uses. Conservation parks - of which Ahuriri was one of four in the area - could be used for ''a whole range of recreational pursuits''.
A public document on the homestead and surrounding facilities, which called for submissions, was released in 2010.