Chinese tourists may be flooding into Queenstown, but they are also travelling more in their own country, placing pressure on national parks.
Learning how to balance tourism with conservation has brought 23 trainee Chinese national park rangers to New Zealand for 10 days, including two days in Queenstown.
The group's leader and China Association of National Parks and Scenic Sites deputy director, Chen Yao, said the biggest challenges were finding a ''balance between protection and development'', and coping with high visitor numbers.
Some parks had ''hundreds of thousands'' of visitors each day.
Department of Conservation Queenstown partnerships ranger Chris Hankin said the department was helping host the group's visit, which was organised by Lincoln University.
While in Queenstown last week the Chinese contingent visited Arrowtown and the historic Chinese settlement, rode bicycles around Lake Hayes and went for a jet-boat trip on the Dart River.
