Reopen the ranges

Hurrah to John Walsh (NZ Herald, Nov 23) on the pointless ongoing closure of most of the Wait¯akere Ranges. As one who has walked or run over every one of the 240km of trails many times, their closure is a colossal loss to our city and a failure to understand the major role nature plays in our physical and mental health. There’s a huge body of academic literature on what is described as “nature-deficit disorder”, much of it summarised in the book Last Child in the Wilderness by Richard Louv.

Nature and wilderness provide a portal into a larger world of knowledge and self-discovery, and today’s urban and tech-obsessed children are especially impoverished by being shut out of our forests. The great worth of outdoors programmes for kids can also be measured in selfesteem, leadership skills, independent thinking and wonderment at the interconnected miracle of life in natural forests. Children develop a lifelong commitment to protecting nature, and guardianship simply through their immersion in it.

Many Wait¯akere trails have little or no kauri on them at all, and even park rangers have privately expressed their bemusement and reservations. I believe local volunteer groups and conservationists should take charge of specific tracks, respecting our great remaining kauri and podocarps while preventing many of our closed trails from being lost forever. This approach would also overcome issues of costs. Aucklanders need to raise their voices and reclaim stewardship of our diminishing wild places, and before 240km of beautiful trails shrink to 60km of manicured tracks that deprive us of wilderness experience and challenge.

Jogyata Dallas, Onehunga.