trampers not paying their way

Yea agree. But the biggest issue (as usual) is who pays for enforcement and the staff required to do this. When I was at DOC, it frequently relied on other concessionaires to police and enforce any polices, strategies and concession special conditions. I think this same mentality would need to be applied to trampers - ie: education messages encouraging all trampers to use peer pressure (ie: paying hut fees, rubbish etc) to rat out those who arent complying. Beyond this, the only thing I think could work is DOC infringement offences to issue tickets to defaulters at those times when rangers ARE around. I think DOC now has the ability to issue tickets now but Im not totally sure what range of offences this may cover.

> its the young ones, not hte old ones That is steriotypical. Im sure some old people are suspects also. I was at Field Hut on Sunday and right behind the toilet was a good 2 shopping bags of toilet paper. Wether or not it was purposley put there or there was a hole in the toilet im not sure but why would anyone dump crap paper right next to a toilet rather than putting it in the toilet? ...

> why would anyone dump crap paper right next to a toilet rather than putting it in the toilet? A wild guess but in some parts of the world the plumbing won't cope with toilet paper. People just expect to put it into a bin beside the toilet instead. Maybe someone didn't have it in their head that paper was anything but general rubbish? Obviously none of which is an excuse for leaving it there.

they leave toilet paper outside the toilet because they cant stand the smell of the toilet so they won't use it... maybe they figure its more likely to be cleaned up by someone else if they leave it nearby as well...

There are a lot of people that dont like the idea of any non flush toilet. These are also the people that carry disinfectant wipes and polish everything before they use it but not after. Ok some loos dont smell that great and there can be fly or 2 but most are not that bad or maybe we are just used to them. Also none of us ever got sick by not caring quite as much about operating theater grade hut bench cleanliness. In fact we probably get sick less because of nice fit immune systems. The mess left behind is just part of the ultra sterile culture. After all you cant get yourself dirty again by cleaning

The best I can come up with is a cross reference between the data from the intentions book and hut books against the issued backcountry passes and ticket stubs in the huts. This at least could be performed in a reactive, retrospective fashion. Data capture overheads would be annoying, but at least not as difficult as proactive enforcement. It would need some soft approach for changing plans.

Paul, that might lead to some of the freeloaders not signing the hut books. As much as something needs to be done about them, any lost revenue would be far outweighed by the time and money expended in a search and rescue scenario where someone hadn't left adequate information. Not to mention the possibility of someone going missing, and there being absolutely no record, no-one deserves that. That said, I don't have a better solution...More rangers perhaps, as previously said. But who pays for that.

Bla bla bla more of the kiwi hate against foreigners, bloody tourists shitting everywhere and profiting off our taxes and so on. Don't you ever get tired? I've seen lots of huts absolutely trashed by kiwis, leaving garbage everywhere, and worst of all burning all the wood and not getting more for the next person. Oh and did I mention the number of kiwis I met that never paid hut fees? But so far I've never came to the conclusion that all kiwis are freeloaders and uncivilised. Maybe you should also question yourselves and stop generalising? My first experience of a NZ hut was a kiwi family at Trilobite hut, who burned all the firewood during 5 days of stay (it was snowing too), and leaving their trash behind. We, 2 tourists, took out their rubbish. And I've seen plenty of foreigners (and kiwis!) taking care of the land, picking rubbish after people, telling others not to do stupid stuff, and paying their fees. I'm absolutely convinced that both kiwis and non-kiwis do have the same percentage of uncivilised people, but it's always the foreigners who get the blame. When I came here I couldn't believe my friends telling me that NZ was an horribly racist and xenophobic country, but it is the case, and it's not fun being on the wrong side. But maybe here in this forum you guys could do more positive things instead of always reminiscing the same old anti-foreigner stuff that is not only hurtful but also insulting to most of us here, and I know a lot who don't speak anymore here, only because of a handful of aggressive, negative and toxic people who always comment here. As for me I'm really tired and sad of all of that and will be removing all my contributions to this website, I've decided that I don't want my name to be linked to the kind of content that is now common here. Thanks to all who helped and gave useful tips and shared great hikes with me. See you somewhere else :)

i've been tramping nearly 40 years all over the country nzers are at fault too, they used to be the biggest problem because there were more of them tramping than foreigners, b but in my experience now foreigners have become a bigger problem, there are so many more of them and their are more issues now than there have been in hte past. we never used to have anywhere near the amount of rubbish and human waste lying around that we do now... or the amount of free loaders the vast majority of NZers I've tramped with have been good. and a great deal of foreigners too. but the sheer number of foreigners around now has increased the numbers causing issues on a scale we never used to see... flights to nz are cheap in the off season, lots of young people come here in vast numbers we've never seen before , a lot of them behave as they like, like kids away from adult supervision for the firs time... we get the rest of the worlds kids coming here behaving like kids. they have our country to do as they see fit... and that's what a lot of them do...