Park still busy despite drop in visitor numbers
Queues to the North Egmont Visitor Centre car park this summer have sometimes lasted more than an hour, but visitor numbers to Te Papakura o Taranaki national park dropped by almost a third in 2020.
The majority of visitors to the park are usually international, but in 2020, as the country’s borders were closed because of Covid-19, more domestic travellers were coming through, Department of Conservation (DOC) senior ranger Dave Rogers said.
‘‘When you’ve got a lot of visitors coming into the park who are new to the area and new to New Zealand culture it requires more time making them aware of conditions and explaining things to them.
‘‘Definitely the domestic traveller has been very active and a lot of Kiwis coming out of Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, Dunedin, Hamilton – we’ve been seeing a lot of them on the roads and coming into the park.’’
Rogers said the park had seen a 24 per cent drop in visitors from 2019 to 2020, which could largely be attributed to its complete closure in March and April for the level 4 lockdown.
The two visitor centres at Dawson Falls and North Egmont had also seen a 27 per cent drop in numbers but Rogers said they were still busy. ‘‘Whether we’ve got low numbers of visitation or high numbers of visitation there’s still servicing and maintenance of tracks, huts, lodges, buildings, historic sites, roads, and car parks.’’
Despite overall visitor numbers being down, the number of people using the Pouakai Circuit, Wilkies Pool track, and Oaonui track, had increased.
‘‘We’ve been surprised at the number of people still coming.’’
Sheetal Prasad, 33, and Nathan Tucker, 31, from Whanga¯rei were visiting Taranaki and the national park for the first time and freedom camping at the North Egmont car park in their self-contained converted bus.
‘‘We’re big believers in being self-contained and not disturbing the environment,’’ Prasad said.
The pair were travelling around New Zealand over the Christmas and New Year break before returning north for work.
They planned to climb Taranaki Maunga, but that changed when Prasad fell and injured her leg in Napier.
‘‘The mountain brought us here, we really wanted to do it, but we thought at least come and have a look at it,’’ Prasad said.
‘‘It’s really nice to be able to do this,’’ Tucker added.