Call for Remarkables to be national park

QUEENSTOWN

ONLY national park status will give the Remarkables Conservation Area the protection it deserves, Federation Mountain Clubs (FMC) president Jan Finlayson says.

The backcountry and outdoor recreation advocacy group says the public conservation area near Queenstown is inadequately protected under its current ‘‘stewardship’’ status, and its conservation and recreation values deserve the highest possible classification.

‘‘This land is glorious, it’s national taonga, and it deserves a classification that honours it appropriately — a classification that gives the Department of Conservation (Doc) a mandate to fiercely protect it.’’

Ms Finlayson has written FMC’s submission to Doc on the reclassification of the 33,000ha area, which consists of three discrete pieces of land in high country east of Lake Wakatipu, between Queenstown and Kingston.

In partnership with representatives of Ngai Tahu runanga, Doc is consulting the public on the land’s reclassification. Submissions close on February 26..

To inform the process, it has produced five reports covering the area’s recreational, historic, ecological, landscape and Ngai Tahu values.

It is expected to propose one or more classifications for the land before going back to the public for a second round of consultation later in the year.

Ms Finlayson, of Geraldine, said Doc had done a good job of assembling facts for the reports, but they undersold the ‘‘collective richness’’ of the area, and were missing information that gave vital context for a sound decision.

Repeated calls to give the land national park status had not been acknowledged.

The reports were also silent on the ‘‘high probability’’ that adjoining pastoral lease land was soon likely to be redesignated as public conservation land under the tenure review process.

In 2017, FMC launched a campaign to make the area the centrepiece of a Remarkables National Park, and wants the tenure review of the 65,000ha Glenaray Station, which runs through the heart of the area, added to the proposed park.

Ms Finlayson said the wider tenure review process was about to finish with the passage of legislation reforming Crown pastoral land, so Glenaray Station’s tenure review was likely be completed shortly.

‘‘If, for some reason, it was derailed, we would expect the amended legislation to provide for parts of a Crown pastoral lease that are not suitable for pastoral use to be removed from the lease and potentially redesignated as public conservation land.’’