trampers not paying their way
following on from Mosley's post about trampers not paying their way
they sound like the same sort of crowd as a lot of the freedom campers. ban freedom campers and you may find you get less of this.
theres a whole grapevine and viral media thats feeding the do NZ for cheap, its public knowledge you can dodge hut fees in a lot of huts and the information on where you can do that gets circulated amongst the budget tourists in person and online…
the situation is only going to get worse unless nz makes a policy to clamp down on budget tourist numbers. they circle the globe looking for ways to freeload and congregate in known locations where they can freeload..
they camp in the shelters on the great walks, i saw one group want to dump their massive rubbish bag at a hut and expect doc to pay to remove it, ranger wasnt there so i told them they had to carry it out, they dumped it at the road end… doc needs roaming rangers to implement large enforceable fines as they have in the states, that have to be paid before people can leave the country and let the word get around. its the milenial me generation of self entitlement,
someone noted to me that young europeans are now a lot more likely to crap absolutely anywhere they want.. on tracks, next to roads and carparks, leave loo paper blowing in the wind. and its the young ones, not hte old ones…. you get your share of americans too. people who havent been brought up with the outdoors etiquette who are here because they are lord or the rings movie fans, not because they are real outdoors people with proper etiquette. its the age of instant gratification, where you dont think about your responsibility to give back, whre you use all the firewood and don't replace it.. where is about what you can get away with… they dont have any issues doing illegal things if they dont think they will get caught…
47 comments
Sorry to see you go, @bohwaz.
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@bohwaz - it's possible to block certain people if you don't want to read their contributions... most forums have antagonists but there are the tools to block them. I think it's worth viewing this discussion in context. That is, long time trampers who were born, or lived and worked in NZ are deeply upset by declining backcountry behaviour in general. The sheer volume of comments by NZers on social media is testament to how upset they are. Me included.
It's also understandable that they have recognised this has coincided with the increase in overseas visitors - aka the explosion in tourism. Local AND overseas (ab)users of our huts and tracks are to blame for this increase in bad behaviour so the greater tramping community need to set the example if we want positive change.
Also keep in mind perspective. What you witness compared to someone else will be different depending on the hut or track. And some places are faring worse than others.
This forum is a pretty accurate snapshot of what is unfolding in our precious backcountry. Your contributions are just as valid and worthwhile as the next.
Ive seen the photos of rubbish left by freedom campers. Ive seen how often the photos show garden waste. I didnt know freedom campers tended gardens.
Yes most freedom campers are tourists. Most nzers have freinds or family to stay with. Yes some freedom campers engage in anti social activities and leave a mess but its not that often that a mess is left somewhere that wasnt already a mess. Not an excuse though. However would they have been as willing to leave a mess if the place had been as pristine as the tourist broucher said it was? Maybe not
Yes tourist do get a bad wrap here which for any particular tourist may or not be justified but the truth is we are accepting far more tourists than we can handle. This is a big part of the problem. I think last year 2 million tourists visited NZ. Thats one for every 2 of us. If 1% of tourists cause problems thats 20000 trouble making tourists. How does that number compare to FMC membership?
Do remember Tourists as a group are not the same as foreigners? If you come here for a holiday you are a tourist. If you come here to live and work then you should be given the same courtesy etc as any NZ resident. After all thats what you are.
Tourist bashing is not foreigner bashing.
Hi bohwaz, please don’t take my post as a tourist bash. As others say, I have met with plenty of idiots from NZ who exploit our back country system - the people in my post on the other thread who had to walk out after trying to sneakily do the Abel Tasman without bookings are Kiwis. I have seen Kiwis leave huts as tips, use up resources like wood and coal, damage the hut in order to graffiti a table or beam, then leave without paying or recording their use in the intentions book, meaning enforcement cannot occur. I don’t doubt that plenty of the sneaky poo-leavers are also Kiwis. A free ride seems to be the goal of everyone these days and honesty and paying one’s way in life seems to be less and less a priority.
However given the huge numbers of tourists drawn to our back country, something needs to be done to manage their additional impact. I have seen (on several occasions) 30 bunks huts on Te Araroa completely full, with my partner and I being the only Kiwis present. The impacts of TA walkers on places like Blue Lake have been well documented as have the steps required to address these impacts - flying a hut in via Air Force helicopter is not cheap!
NZ citizens/residents contribute via taxes, however tourists only pay GST which at 15% provides very little income to support conservation and maintenance. Additionally back country passes are comparatively cheap and are usually bought by TA walkers, thus even less money is provided to DoC despite the massive influx.
The issue of tourist dollars, people from both NZ and overseas seeking to get a free ride as much as possible, and declining respect for back country etiquette is a real issue and one which I feel needs to be discussed, albeit in a respectful and fair manner.
> 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?
The difference here is that its one thing to behave unruly in your own country and its another to be a visitor and bring your unruly behavior with you.
@ bohwaz
It's not good seeing you storm off like this. Forums are a place where people express ideas, opinions and share experiences freely ... good, bad and indifferent.
And every contentious topic WILL provoke a negative reaction in someone; it's inevitable and normal for this to happen. By all means respond and explain why you disagree, or feel offended ... that is your right too.
But tossing the toys out of the cot is to be blunt, a form of guilt tripping that is counter productive. I'd suggest we all reset the clock in this. Please feel free to reconsider; and know you would be welcome back.
> NZ citizens/residents contribute via taxes, however tourists only pay GST which at 15% provides very little income to support conservation and maintenance
The GST, even before all the extra business generated, is almost certainly a major net benefit to NZ compared with all the public expenses which tourism imposes. The reason it doesn't adequately cover conservation and maintenance of the conservation estate required by tourism is because we choose to spend that GST on other stuff we want like health, education, storing illiterate people in jail, and flag referendums.
At the same time a good number of NZ residents pay very little or zero income tax, while other residents pay large amounts.
This is all expected. It's what the tax system is. There are often good reasons why some people pay lots of tax and others don't, and why revenue from GST gets allocated to other places. But I think the whole "but we pay the taxes to cover it when they don't" argument gets less compelling as soon as it's considered in detail. The only reason tourist's tax doesn't cover the stuff they use is because we've decided it won't.
There might be good and justifiable reasons to charge tourists more for some things. I think we should acknowledge, though, that for right or wrong reasons it's essentially New Zealanders choosing to put the price up for others because we're in charge and they're not... Which is the same reason we choose to spend the tax tourists have already paid on stuff which doesn't benefit them.
For context, though, NZ's model and way of interacting with the world tends to be one that elevates the rights of people who live here, even to a higher priority than some citizens who don't. If anyone out there wants to vote in a New Zealand election, you needn't be a citizen as is required by many other countries. You don't even need to be a permanent resident. You only have to have resided in NZ for a year or more with a visa that has no expiry date.
>its one thing to behave unruly in your own country and its another to be a visitor and bring your unruly behavior with you
Is it? It's the same unruly behaviour - how is it different if you are a local, tourist or from O/S ?
I empathize with bohwaz's comments - and this point has been made (many times) before : it's not appropriate to criticise/attack a whole group (eg tourists, foreigners, kiwis, old, young, maori, pakeha ...). Criticise the behaviour of people who freeload, who dump rubbish etc. and realise that the majority actually do the right thing.
I'm a foreigner; I always pay for the huts I sleep in, always clean up, never dump rubbish, frequently pick up others' rubbish (particularly ccf - I hate ccf bits on a track). So, it does annoy me, a bit, reading negative generalisations but I hope bohwaz reconsiders pulling the plug.
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no one is blaming bohwaz, he chose to leave, no one is saying they want that.
we are all individuals, i'm not blaming all foreigners i know there are a lot of good ones, but as soon as the word foreigner comes up with criticism then people act like its a blanket xenophobia.
everyone i'm speaking to same thing foreigners are by far the biggest perpetrators. and thats my experience, we cant stop locals, but we can manage the numbers of foreigners and the more foreigners the worse the problem,
when i started tramping 40 years ago, i never heard other trampers talking about excrement in the open around tracks... now its common place,, i dont think NZers have been responsible for all that increase.
i see foreigners calling out other foreigners online, esp on teh TA, just read more about peoples stories online about tramping here now.
DOC picked up half a dozen bucket of excrement from around the tongariro crossing, theres numerous toilets on that track, they just added more in, but it still didnt stop the issues.
what we are now seeing on the tracks is large no's of foreign backpackers and freedom campers trying to save bucks, they arent normal trampers. a lot of them arent that environmentally conscious. some of them just want to knock up the miles single mindedly and dont think about being clean, some of them want to kill time in free accommodation and dont care that much at all for treating their surroundings well.
bad behaviour is bad behaviour regardless of where you are from. but we've estalated the bad behaviour by allowing more people in who are badly behaved and seen the increasing impact on our country
tourism numbers are a significant proportion of the people in our country now, far more than they ever were and the bad behaviour in the back country has gone up as the no's have gone up..
i dont think i'm xenophobic, i have loads of friends who are immigrants from diferent ethniciies and religeons and beliefs or live overseas. but they are decent people.
i dont want to see more bad behaviour in the mountains and thats all there is to it.
i'm happy to see well behaved foreigners in the mountains, ideally not completely swamping the tracks.
its about the behaviour and the the growing percentage of foreigners here who exhibit that behaviour nad a lot of the time you are some place where what you comeacross is mainly foreigners and a lot of rubbish or human waste around, theres plenty of information around to support that. it was always a small percentage of locals with the bad behaviour, if you were in ahut they wre the minority and you could confront them to stop the bad behaviour, now you can be in a hut and outnumbered by people behaviing badly who are now more often than not foreigners, that is the information that is coming out.. and foreigners just think we are a bunch of xenophobes for raising it...
"when i started tramping 40 years ago, i never heard other trampers talking about excrement in the open around tracks… now its common place,, i dont think NZers have been responsible for all that increase."
But they did throw all their rubbish in a big hole next to the hut, and they did cut down all the trees around the hut for fire wood.
I think we should just focus on our own behaviour and encourage to change or condemn any individual we meet along our way that chooses ignorant behaviour in the back country no matter what their background, race, gender or age is.
I do hear comments expressed by some regular posters here lately that it does sound a bit like a a broken record these days. Some topics, same posts repeated over and over. Many of these points have been made many times.
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Forum | Tracks, routes, and huts |
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Started by | waynowski |
On | 5 June 2018 |
Replies | 46 |
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