I heard about the legal opinion at an FMC AGM a few years back. The question of charging tourists more came up and a senior DOC manager who was present told the meeting about the opinion so the issue was off the agenda as far as they were concerned.
It looks as if the freeloading issue hit the Nelson Mail a week ago -- http://www.stuff.co.nz/nelson-mail/news/4532856/Freeloading-hut-users-a-problem
I would start paying hut fees again when DOC removes the gates they erected and locked a few months back at the Wairau Bar.
Okay, well that's something else to add to the list of non-hut-related problems people have that's used as an excuse for not paying hut fees.
Have you considered just not using huts at all?
nope, the more a hut is used, the more it needs to be maintained and the less money DOC has to spend on installing locked gates.
Huh? But hut maintenance likely comes of of completely different budgets and the DoC staff involved quite possibly don't even speak to each other. If you're going to be civilly disobedient in this way, please at least write to DoC and tell them every specific hut you've stayed in which you're not paying for as a direct result of their actions on the Wairau Bar. Otherwise DoC won't even know what they're missing or what they have to do to get you to pay, and it'll have no effect.
My feeling on this kind of logic is that DoC is a massive organisation with a million responsibilities that has to balance a plethora of conflicting interests and lobby groups all over the spectrum. Everyone everywhere wants everything done differently, and to top it off there's nowhere near enough money and resources for DoC to do most tasks in a way that will please most people. There are very few people having any interaction with the conservation estate without having some kind of gripe with how DoC's doing something somewhere. Doubtless sometimes, DoC staff simply make mistakes, in which case they should be told about it and people should definitely complain and make it known, but why should it be hut fees that bear the brunt from people's protests?
By the same logic as this and the 1080 complaints, people may as well refuse to pay hut fees until:
* DoC stops putting silly signs in huts, or
* DoC stops letting commercial advertisers visibly sponsor nature walks in relatively remote places hours from a road-end, or
* DoC bosses stop complaining about people carrying a barbecue up Mt Taranaki ( http://www.stuff.co.nz/4556279 ), or
* DoC stops wasting money on Kakapo recovery because I think they should be spending it on researching Moa cloning and revival. (Moa are in a much worse state than Kakapo, after all.)
DoC would never get hut fees from anyone because it'd be impossible to completely satisfy most hut users.
But hut maintenance is something that happens independently, and hut fees cover about 1/3 of the cost of keeping huts legal and up to spec and within the law. People should consider stuff DoC does that they find useful at least as much as stuff DoC does that they don't like. One way or another DoC actually keeps a lot of huts maintained, and whatever else is happening in DoC's world I think it's fully reasonable for users to contribute something towards their upkeep, as long as it's administered fairly.
If you were complaining about having to pay higher fees for gas that's mostly wasted by tourists who have "free heaters" blasting away all day at particular huts, or having to pay extra for mattresses when you only ever sleep outside, it might make some kind of sense.
Excuse me for adding (possibly not much) to this thread, but as a 'foreigner' who uses DoC huts, and may I add, pay for them as well, I would just like to say that despite all the problems that have been highlighted here, the fact remains that DoC huts are arguably the best and well maintained anywhere in the world.
I have been coming to NZ for many years now and not once have I met a fellow tramper who had not, nor is willing to pay for the service that DoC huts provide.
Personally my experience in the Howden hut on the Routeburn track, with the warden John, in last years mass evacuation due to storms, leaves me with nothing but praise for DoC and the professionalism of it's employees.
Like izogi, I find it hard to follow the logic of people who baulk at paying hut fees. Every time I visit a hut - and I do that two or three times a week if the weather's kind - I feel incredibly grateful to DoC and to the many tramping clubs and individual trampers who have provided us with such a wonderful outdoor resource. As Fred Dagg so memorably said, 'we don't know how lucky we are.' Although most of my visits are for a lunch break, and I rarely use anything but a bowl of water for my dog, I buy an annual pass as a contribution and am very happy to do so. In any group there will always be the mean-spirited and the tramping community is no exception. But in my experience they're thankfully few and far between. The vast majority of trampers are among the kindest and most generous people I've ever known.
Not sure this has much to do with the generosity and spirit of the people involved. For example: I find generally that on an individual level the hunters I meet in the huts are the most friendly and generous people I meet in the backcountry - sharing what they have and happy to include anyone in the conversation. A contrast to many of the tramping groups I meet in both of these aspects.
Yet the hunters seem the most likely to refuse to pay.
Lets not pretend this is about personal generosity: for most people (NZ residents at least) this is about the politics and ethics of whether access to our backcountry resources should be free.
Personally, I strongly believe these resources should be free:
1) I believe that they pay for themselves many times over in terms of the benefit they bring to society, especially in terms of health - both physical and mental. These resources are for health and fitness, the ambulance at the top of the cliff. Far cheaper to maintain than the midical services at the bottom of the cliff, dealing with the results of obesity, diabetes, depression, ...
2) I believe also that every barrier we place in the way of people wanting to experience NZ's backcountry ends up impeding the conservation effort.
I was asked recently at an interview to describe something I've done to most contribute to conservation in NZ. And my answer, after thought, was that the biggest contribution I believe I make (despite working every day in the bush on conservation-related projects) is precisely what we do here on this site: providing the information and support to encourage people to get out into the bush. Because only when they get there will they come to value it as it is. And by valuing it, they become stakeholders, keen to ensure it remains that way. They become receptive to learning about the issues it faces, effectively become supporters of the conservation effort. Some take the step of volunteering - take a look at the trapping and monitoring projects in the Ruahines for examples of NZDA, tramping groups and individuals becoming involved. Others will do nothing active, but the fact that they support efforts to keep our backcountry intact can only aid the conservation effort come budget day and election day.
3)
I don't mind paying through my taxes for the hundreds of other resources provided by our government to 'improve' people's lives: motorways which I will never use, for example. So why should we have to pay to use, what is after all, a resource owned by all of us?
4)
And finally, I question quite how many of the dollars received through the hut ticket scheme are spent on printing, selling, enforcing and collecting hut tickets.
Yet I pay for an annual pass every year ... not because I believe they should be required, but basically 'coz i don't want to deal with the stress involved in making a stand ... You can see why I'm not an activist!
Not a bad statement for a non activist:)
