Quest for perfect pics is tarnishing the tarns

It’s the shot of Mt Taranaki thousands of visitors want to take but it’s helping to destroy a fragile alpine environment at the same time.

The reflection of Mt Taranaki in the Pouakai tarns has joined the likes of Roy’s Peak above Lake Wanaka, and Lake Tekapo’s Church of the Good Shepherd, as one of the ‘‘must do’’ photos for snap-happy tourists.

Last year the Department of Conservation estimated 22,000 people visited Egmont National Park with the majority walking the Pouakai track to view the mountain from across the Ahukawakawa wetland.

Numbers using the track began to take off in 2016, when the Lonely Planet travel guide listed the Pouakai Crossing, the track on which the tarns are accessed, as one of Taranaki’s ‘‘must do’s’’.

Thousands of pictures of the lakes have been posted to photo sharing site Instagram.

DOC has installed a boardwalk to avoid trampling of the wetland vegetation but many picture snapping trampers are now walking beyond the boardwalk, pitching tents, or swimming in the ankle deep tarns until the right conditions emerge to take the photograph.

New Plymouth photographer Peter Florence took his first tarn reflection image 10 years ago.

He once camped out until 3am to get the right shot.

‘‘It blows you away,’’ he said. Now he only ventures up to the spot in the winter when there is no-one around.

‘‘During the summer you can’t get anywhere near the place to take a photo.

‘‘It’s getting ridiculous,’’ Florence said.

DOC senior ranger Dave Rogers said the rapid increase in visitors had caught the department ‘‘on the hop’’ and it was now starting to take steps to preserve the site.

‘‘It is like a number of sites around New Zealand now where the word is out, people see the photographs in brochures and want to find it themselves but the area is not quite meeting their needs,’’ he said.

‘‘So we are extending the boardwalk and putting in more hardened surfaces to protect the edges of the tarns.

‘‘It’s a special site and a fragile alpine environment and the vegetation is being trampled so we

need to put in more protection.’’

Rogers said more signs would be put in place before Christmas warning visitors to keep to the boardwalks, and that camping and swimming were not allowed.

Camping within 500m of the tarns would be prohibited as it had created rubbish and toileting issues, he said.

Hut wardens at Pouakai Hut would be asking visitors to comply and would carefully watch behaviour, he said.

‘‘We want people to get the shot but we don’t want them to ruin the area doing it.

‘‘We need to recognise it as a special site and if we can manage behaviour the area will last forever.’’

The wrong way: Trampers going off the boardwalk to get their shot of Mt Taranaki reflected in a tarn, as in this example, are threatening the special area.

The right way: Emma Holmes also stayed on the boardwalk when Alex Keegan took her picture of Mt Taranaki from the frozen Pouakai tarns.

We asked readers for examples of their Pouakai tarns pictures. Jayden Strickland and Rebecca Randell stuck to the boardwalk when they took their photograph.