New Zealand has become a world leader as a tourist destination, and while this is great for our economy, we need to take care that in welcoming visitors in greater numbers, we do not lose the very reason they come.
A recent article (ODT, World Focus, 21.8.17), cites local frustration at over-crowding of some of Europe’s most popular tourist hot spots. Protests, graffiti, threats and physical intimidation are occurring. Authorities there are considering how limitations can be imposed on tourist numbers.
In a recent picture caption of the island of Skye (ODT, World page, 22.8.17), we read that infrastructure there is being "stretched to the limit by the number of visitors heading there to enjoy its rugged beauty".
This made me think of Milford Sound, where I spent a week two years ago as a volunteer for the Department of Conservation, helping visitors to find a parking space. More often than not at peak times they had to be turned back to the Park and Ride facility a kilometre or so up the road, resulting in drivers missing their boat connection on the Sound.
Apart from the problems of parking and traffic on the difficult access road, the beauty and peace of this awesome place was ruined by the endless noise of planes and helicopters arriving and departing.
As Europe becomes more crowded, expensive (and dangerous), people are turning to places like New Zealand, Australia and South America for their taste of wilderness and adventure. As they do, the sheer pressure of numbers will remove the very reason they come. We are selling our country short. We don’t even charge a parking fee at tourist hot spots like Milford Sound. Most visitors expected a fee, and were astounded to find parking was free.
On the Otago Peninsula and in the Catlins, tourist numbers are in the hundreds of thousands. No entry or parking fee is imposed and there is little or no control over access to little blue and yellow-eyed penguin nests.
These birds are critically endangered and need protection for their survival. Doc volunteers do their best during peak summer months, but as one of these volunteers, I have seen visitors ignore signs in their efforts to obtain photos, resulting in disturbed birds, and hungry chicks.
We do not have an entry fee for our national parks. Maybe it’s time this was considered seriously.
It would be difficult to police, but it is done in South America, where four years ago I paid more than $US100 ($NZ137) for access to a park in Patagonia.
Recently I was told by a Doc ranger that, at the opening of the season, our "Great Walks", particularly the Routeburn, are immediately being block-booked by Australian secondary schools, whose under-16s are not required to pay hut fees. Maybe this privilege should apply only to New Zealanders, and the revenue received as result used to better control sensitive areas, provide toilets and other facilities as required, and for track maintenance and predator control.
Serious money needs to be spent on improving infrastructure to cope with the huge increase in visitor numbers, rather than in lining the pockets of quick-thinking entrepreneurs. What has been done so far is too little, too late. A blanket charge to all visitors on arrival in this country would be a start, but only a start. Local councils are doing their best on limited budgets to cope with the freedom camping explosion, but this is a problem that central government needs to address urgently.
It’s all very well travelling in a self-contained vehicle, but many of these travellers don’t like emptying or cleaning the on-board toilets, still opting to use convenient bushes or roadsides. Maybe all foreign visitors should automatically have to use certified camping grounds, of which more could be provided.
New Zealand is a special place and I want to keep it that way.
- Mosgiel woman Judy Knox is a retired teacher, author, tramper, climber and volunteer Doc worker.
