Coast needs tourist dollars
Tourism is expanding aggressively on the West Coast. But is it at the cost of what was once prized as an untamed landscape? Andrea Vance reports.
‘‘Nowhere is solitude sweeter than on the West Coast.’’ This poetic description is the opening lines in the Lonely Planet guide to New Zealand’s West Coast.
Its authors go on to point out that the region forms almost 9 per cent of the land area of New Zealand, but contains less than
1 per cent of its population, about
33,000 people.
Of them, just over 2000 work in tourism, about 12 per cent of the total workforce. A third are employed by accommodation providers.
Tourism is the second-biggest economic driver on the Coast (behind dairy). And there are ambitious plans for growth.
About a million visitors pour into the region each year. By 2021, tourism chiefs want to have added another 200,000 to that total.
Forecast expenditure by these visitors would soar: from about
$522 million in 2017 to $598m by the end of this year (an increase of 7.4 per cent). By 2021, it could be as much as $810m.
On those numbers, the sector would employ 3485 people.
That’s attractive because the West Coast is bucking national unemployment trends.
According to Infometrics, there were just shy of 16,000 filled jobs in the region last year, and growth was a sluggish 0.8 per cent. The national average is 3 per cent.
In ASB’s latest quarterly regional economic scoreboard, the Coast was ranked 13th equal, with Gisborne, out of 16 areas.
Since 2012, the West Coast has been in the grip of an economic downturn, since the closure of the Cape Foulwind cement works, near Westport, the mothballing of a gold mine near Reefton, and a slump in commodity prices. Over five years, to 2017, the region lost 1500 jobs and GDP fell by 20 per cent, according to Development West Coast figures.
The area achieved no net GDP growth in the year from March
2017.
Coasters believe they are being left behind.
There is a lingering bitterness over the Government’s refusal to allow mining on conservation land and its reluctance to further intensify dairying.
So, those who scratch out a living in the seasonal sector balk at any limitations to its growth. The heavy storms that batter the region – such as the March flood that ripped out the Waiho River bridge, stranding tourists – make it an unpredictable livelihood.
Growing tensions are pitting
conservationists and outdoor lovers against the Department of Conservation (DOC) and tourism chiefs over plans to develop treasured West Coast national parks and increase the numbers passing through them.
In particular, draft management plans for Westland Tai Poutini and Aoraki/Mt Cook national parks have been heavily criticised by conservationists and outdoor advocates.
Last month, the department put the plans on hold at the request of Nga¯ i Tahu. But officials are charging ahead with other plans to drive more visitors into the region, and to redevelop the magical
O¯ pa¯ rara cave system.
Matt Newton is a former rescue pilot who built up his helicopter business servicing Taranaki’s oil and gas industry.
When the Government ended all new oil and gas exploration, Newton began to search for opportunities elsewhere.
He expanded his family-run Precision Helicopter business into Hokitika, where he’s been taking tourists up to Ivory Lake, at the head of the Waitaha Valley.
A red-roofed, former meteorological hut sits atop polished rock, overlooking a brilliant blue lake.
It’s a treacherous three-day climb to reach – DOC no longer maintains the track – and the challenge makes it the destination of a lifetime for many trampers.
Newton got a temporary permit for his flights, carried out a threemonth trial this summer and has applied for a permanent concession. But there’s opposition within the tramping community.
Permolat is a network of volunteers that looks after a network of remote high-country huts and bivouacs in central Westland. Their online community Remote Huts criticises Newton’s plans.
‘‘This is a further example of the insidious creep of noise and activity into some of our prized remote destinations and wilderness spaces,’’ they wrote.
‘‘There are not many of them left, and DOC appear to have a pathetically passive and [we] would say irresponsible response in setting boundaries. It’s a real challenge and achievement to reach Ivory Lake by foot, and its isolation and remote ambience is what makes it unique.’’
Newton’s application is now out for public submission.
He agrees that ‘‘it is a very rewarding trek in there. But I have
flown in an elderly couple, in their
80s, and they found it very rewarding too. I look at both sides’’.
He operates using the ‘‘Fly Neighbourly’’ principles established by the Helicopter Association International.
‘‘If someone is already at the lake, we are not going to be landing, not even flying low. We carry on and not even interrupt their day,’’ Newton says.
‘‘We’ll see them walking up the track, tents or deckchairs outside the hut, a sign of people being there. We try and create flight paths that are not over huts or regular tramping huts. We try and keep out of people’s sight and people’s ear range.
‘‘I’m all about going in with minimal noise and impact, and a lot of that is about how you fly the helicopter. You don’t choose a route that flies up the main track, and you don’t fly down low over the guts of the gulley. Our takeoff and landing area is miles away from any houses.’’
It’s apparent Newton loves Ivory Lake, and wants others to appreciate it. ‘‘It is the tail end of an old glacier, that once would have been hundreds of feet higher over where the hut is now, and flowed
15km into the valley.
‘‘It’s been receding and Ivory Lake is like a little ice block now, down to that last little bit that will be gone forever one day soon.
‘‘In the spring, the fragrance of the wild flowers is phenomenal, you can smell them from 100ft up.
‘‘It would be nice to make the parks more accessible. But in saying that, we don’t want to turn them into a circus.’’
It took two years for Newton’s landlord to get resource consent to operate out of the Hokitika Gorge.
‘‘A lot of people didn’t want it, so it’s not easy. We’ve been running our business for 15 or 16 years working in oil and gas, seismic exploration, but that’s all tapped out now.
‘‘It’s important for the Government to recognise that they are closing doors for people like me.’’
It is this clash of values that is at the heart of much of the opposition to development in the national parks and the wider West Coast. About 85 per cent of the region is under Department of Conservation management.
The almost 40-year-old National Parks Act, and the 1987 Conservation Act govern management of the parks.
Inherent in them is a priority to preserve ‘‘national park values’’,
says Federated Mountain Clubs vice-president Jan Finlayson.
‘‘There are all sorts of small and large problems with the [draft management] plans. They are less plans for national parks, and all that national parks stand for, than they are plans for commercial tourism development. And that is sad. And wrong.
‘‘Our national parks are places of immense and tangible value, they are very special, they are very beautiful. More so all the time, I think, as wild nature becomes ever more compromised and ever rarer.
‘‘On entering the park, we should be able to have a proper, wild, peaceful, green national park experience, right from the boundary. You should be able to find quiet, solitude, no fences, no commercial intrusions.
‘‘But people are having to go further away from the park boundary now to find that.
‘‘There are large volumes of people, but people in themselves don’t make a lot of noise.
‘‘Where we are finding intrusion is from that commercial activity, the noisy, the mechanised things, the commercial things, and they do spoil it for everybody, recreationalists and tourists alike.’’
She is particularly troubled by plans to increase the footprint of Mt Cook village, a tourist centre that mainly houses hotels and staff accommodation.
‘‘The legislation is set up to actively foster traditional, New
Zealand recreation, which is by nature modest in its accoutrement.
‘‘It allows our beautiful natural environment to shine, to be the star. We don’t want to look at built structures, we want to appreciate its magic and mysteries.
‘‘These sorts of commercial activities should take place outside the national parks. Twizel and Tekapo are very close by, tourists are adequately catered for outside the national park, and that is where we would like to see development take place.
‘‘This plan is shifting away from recreation to commercial tourism. We are not debating the best way to proceed with protecting our beautiful national park, but rather to what degree its values will be compromised.’’
Simon Milne, who is director of AUT’s Tourism Research Institute, recently completed a visitor strategy for Great Barrier Island. The strategy strives to have minimal impact on the natural environment and the lifestyles of locals.
‘‘Wherever you establish a park, wherever you put in rules, regulations and restrictions, you are going to run up against some forms of tension,’’ Milne says. ‘‘Those are things we have to try and manage and work with as carefully as possible.’’
It’s vital that local communities are on board with tourism development, or tensions quickly develop, he says.
‘‘You will have people in the region who feel strongly about a particular resource, and there will be others who are looking to exploit that resource, and grow tourism within the local community.
‘‘These are jewels in the crown that attract visitors – even when it is a place that is fairly remote or removed – but they are also something that local people will feel strongly attached to.
‘‘If they feel that their ability to enjoy these resources is reduced significantly … that starts to eat away at the willingness of the people to play the role as hosts to these visitors.’’
Losing the goodwill of locals inevitably impacts on the visitors’ experience, he says.
‘‘In this particular part of the country, there are some strongwilled people and people that are living in this area for lifestyle reasons . . . we need to not only understand what the impacts are on the natural environment but to also get a strong feel about how the community feels about that kind of growth in numbers.’’
In Reefton, the closure of a gold mine in 2016 was a huge blow, with the loss of more than 50 jobs. But locals are reshaping the former mining town into a tourist destination. At the heart of their plans is a scheme to revive a derelict powerhouse, the first public electricity in the southern hemisphere.
Electrician Greg Topp, of the Reefton Powerhouse Trust, says the idea was formed over a beer, but has taken 17 years of planning.
He wants it to be an environmentally friendly tourist attraction. ‘‘We are going to recreate the buildings on the original sites . . . we will produce electricity – it has got to be sustainable. At the end of the day, when you finish you don’t want to leave a liability.
‘‘I don’t believe anyone sets out on the Coast to harm the environment, even our gold and coal miners – and a lot of people will disagree with that – they are really mindful of what they are doing. Coasters are mindful. There is just misconception that we only want to damage things, but no.
‘‘We need to be proud of our heritage, we need to grab hold of it and we need to tell that story.’’
International visitor numbers have swelled – overall, New Zealand has seen a 41 per cent increase in five years. More than five million visitors are predicted to arrive by 2024. Local frustrations over traffic, road access, parking, overcrowding, visitor driving, rubbish disposal and freedom camping have already surfaced.
Milne says it partly explains the intense, nationwide reaction to the ‘‘unruly’’ English tourists, who dominated headlines in January with their anti-social and sometimes criminal behaviour.
‘‘We have particular hotspots where we can see the tensions and issues related to overtourism, especially during high seasons.
‘‘These underlying tensions were that people felt visitors really need to respect the New Zealand environment and the values.’’
Jim Little, chief executive of Tourism West Coast, shrugs off the tensions associated with ‘‘overtourism’’.
‘‘I think that is part of some very, very small areas, or areas of the national parks.
‘‘It’s not the parks in general. There are one or two little pressure points where, yes, we do need to take some care, I don’t think they are not under pressure.’’
Asked to identify those problem areas, he says: ‘‘Look, I’m not really quite sure.
‘‘I just know there is one or two places where a whole lot of people get into car parks, like the hill where everyone can climb up to take photographs of Wanaka and places like the Tongariro Crossing. Those are some of those examples.
‘‘We get a bit of pressure at the road going up to Franz Josef glacier over February, March, but the Department of Conservation manages it very well.’’
Finlayson is calling for a ‘‘huge mindshift’’ away from aggressive growth. ‘‘We need a supply-side focus, not a demand-side focus. Let’s focus on what our beautiful places, with their immense and tangible values, can provide and our people and our wonderful recreation tradition can allow, rather than what’s being demanded.
‘‘A very good analogy, I think, is one’s domestic home. Would we be so prepared to compromise our home values, our home rules and our family life for the demands of absolute strangers?
‘‘No, we’d be far more likely to lay down the law and tell people on our doorstep how we do things at home and invite them in on condition they abide by our rules, and respect our way of life and our place.’’