Ranges may become no man’s land
Proposal to make Waitakeres off limits to visitors in bid to save devastated kauri
The Waitakere Ranges could be closed to the million people who visit every year under a dramatic proposal to save the west Auckland park from kauri dieback disease.
It is one of five options due to be put before Auckland Council early next week, and will follow a rahui, or exclusion zone, being placed on the 16,000ha park on Saturday by west Auckland iwi Te Kawerau a Maki.
Authorities are battling to contain the spread of kauri dieback infection. Concerns have mounted with infection rates jumping from 8 per cent to 19 per cent in five years, concentrated around where people walk.
More than half the substantial kauri areas in the ranges now show symptoms of infection.
Shutting the entire park to visitors would set a national and global precedent, throw up a regulatory headache and, officials say, ultimately might not halt the spread.
But the situation had become so serious councillors had asked officers to “pull out all the stops”, Environment and Community Committee chairwoman Penny Hulse said last night.
The options include giving up efforts, maintaining the status quo, ramping up work, closing all medium and high-risk tracks, and closing the park completely.
“The issue that makes this so complicated is the ranges area is everywhere from Pae O Te Rangi, to Piha, to the backblocks of Swanson and Waitakere village, with farms, communities and houses,” Hulse said.
“That’s making this a lot more complicated than just closing a simple park.”
Officials have not worked out how such a closure would be enforced but one possibility was a Controlled Area Notice — a major measure never before used by Auckland Council and which would try to manage spread of the disease.
“We’d have to look at how we manage activities through a Controlled Area Notice to prevent the disease from spreading — essentially preventing people from moving mud,” biosecurity team manager Phil Brown said. “The scale of this would be quite different from many of the others that have been put in place.”
Enforcing a closure could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and require new infrastructure and warranted officers on the ground — likely stretching outside current council resources.
Regional parks manager Rachel Kelleher said enforcement had been “particularly difficult” where there had been closures in other places.
“There have been some sites that have been closed to manage disease, and visitation has actually increased, rather than decreased.”
But while there were no comparable examples of such an intervention elsewhere in the world — and it still wasn’t clear how the infection could be spread by other means — some scientists felt an enforced exclusion zone could have merit.
News of Te Kawerau a Maki’s rahui had drawn a range of concerns and views from the public, with some backing a restriction and others against it.
Hulse expected many Aucklanders would support the move, but others would be worried about how it would affect them.
“We’ve got people who run businesses in the ranges and their concerns are for how they retain their livelihoods and businesses that are predicated on tourism, so we need to hear from them, too,” she said.
“We want to try to do the best, but we also have to make sure that we spend ratepayers’ money on solutions that are actually going to help.”
With councillors still to read the officers’ report, she couldn’t say which way the committee might vote.
Ten areas across the Waitakere Ranges Regional Park’s 250km of walking tracks had already been closed to trampers as the infection intensified.
Meanwhile, the council has been upgrading cleaning stations and track surfaces, installed more signage and run a region-wide awareness programme.
But groups including The Tree Council, the Waitakere Ranges Protection Society, Forest and Bird and the Friends of Regional Parks have called for a bolder efforts — and a full closure until the work could be completed.
This included closing tracks to healthy kauri, stopping events such as the Hillary Trail Marathon, boosting the programme of building boardwalks and “dry” tracks and using phosphite treatment on public land to keep individual trees alive.