The 35km Kawarau Gorge Trail, linking the Queenstown Trail from Gibbston’s Victoria Flats to Bannockburn, has been approved following successful "cordial negotiations" between the Central Otago Trails Network Trust (COTNT) and objectors in an Environment Court appeal.
The only outstanding issue to resolve is fine-tuning a section of the trail traversing Department of Conservation (Doc) land, which requires a community management agreement and lizard management plan.
Trust chairman Stephen Jeffery said, all going well, approval should be in place early next year.
Work started on the trail in 2014 — it attracted $26million from former prime minister Sir John Key in 2016, as part of the New Zealand cycle trail project to connect the five Great Rides in Central Otago, but the funding was not released until August 2018.
COTNT executive trustee Janeen Wood said that was because there was a change of government, and a subsequent change of process.
"So we had to do another ... feasibility study for the combined trail, the length of the network."
There had also been delays due to Doc processes, particularly in relation to the conservation management strategy (CMS), she said.
"They’d given us support over the years, but the CMS didn’t include the Kawarau Gorge, and they had no process for approving new trails.
"So we had to activate a partial review of the Otago CMS, and that doesn’t take a short period of time."
That went live this July, but there was now a new process under way for the community management agreement.
"Everywhere you turn, you find these bureaucratic hurdles," Ms Wood said.
Provided Doc was happy with the agreement and the lizard management plan, the trust expected to put out a tender soon after to get the $6.5million, two-year construction programme under way.
The trail would include a new underpass on State Highway 6, on the Cromwell side of the Nevis Bluff, for which Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency was responsible, along with bridges and other "unique features".
It would ultimately connect the Lake Dunstan Trail, Otago Central Rail Trail, Roxburgh Gorge Trail and Clutha Gold Trail with the Queenstown Trail.
Ms Wood said the trust’s ambition was to create a 550km network of trails, including a Wanaka link to Luggate, while there was also a 13km "gap" in the Roxburgh Gorge, from Doctors Point to Shingle Creek.
Both of those missing links included Doc land, but she was hopeful to "get them over the hurdles" and, possibly, get all three sections under construction around the same time.
"We’re determined to make it happen."
Mr Jeffery said the trust was grateful to landowners who had provided legal access for the trail at Victoria Flats and Mt Difficulty Station, and former Queenstown Lakes mayor Jim Boult, council chief executive Mike Theelen and council staff for their support to overcome landowner concerns and "technical hurdles".
He believed the trail network could "only reinforce the profile of the region as a growing international cycling destination".
