Trampers slam bid for fees

Unfortunately this item has disappeared off the stuff web site before I could read it. But on this subject you want to read Geoff Spearpoint's article in the Aug 07 FMC Bulletin, entitled "Just a Visitor, or do you live here?" In this Geoff argues against the use of the term "visitor" as used by DOC in relation to the conservation estate. How can we be visitors when it is our own? Yes the right to free access to National Parks and the conservation estate is deep in the NZ Psyche. Infact it is ingrained early in the text of the National Parks Act and the Conservation Act. Any attempt to change that would be met with fierce resistance. One way I like to look at it is that all NZers now and in the future are enriched by the Conservation Estate. You don't need to actually go there to feel that the world is a better place because of its existance. I think if you asked people, many of who do not go tramping I think they would agree with this. That Treasury report seems to be a very narrow interpretation of the way things should be.

I am also annoyed to be labelled a "tourist" when I visit the North Island. I guess you are a visitor if you are outside your "home." I think it is safe to say that many or most trampers in NZ would consider forest in any part of the country "home turf" to them. So therefore they are not visitors, and are certainly not tourists. The people who use these words may be city dwellers who would consider a backcountry trip an alien experience. Generalisations of course, but interesting to think about.

Trampers already pay hut fees and camping fees - and these are certainly under the category of "user fees." I think that charging people for entering the parks on top of that would simply convince more people not to use our wonderful conservation estate. Instead, we should be getting more that the existing 4 percent out there. We all pay taxes for things we don't personally use. That's inevitable. We all pay for roads even if we don't drive, we all pay for schools even if we don't have children. People who don't tramp shouldn't have a problem with funding DOC.

I think also that there are a lot of problems in society that stem from being stuck indoors and in cities. We need incentives for people to get out more, not disincentives.

There is a great deal of truth in the Treasury analysis. Tramping is largely a pakeha middle class recreation (when did you last see a pacific island or asian New Zealander in the hills?) who can well afford to fund a greater share of the cost of providing back country facilities. Hut fees in particular are pathetically low and provide but a fraction of the true cost of building, maintaince & financial depreciation of the hut. It really annoys me to hear trampers & climbers festooned with expensive high tech gear and having driven 100's of km to the track head in expensive cars (and in the case of climbers having just paid for a helicopter flight to the hut)moaning about a few pathetic dollars for hut fees. The ill-considered waiver of hut fees on the great walks for under 18yr olds is a classic case of provider capture - the poor subdising the rich. For a North Shore family doing the Routeburn the hut fees would be a minute fraction of the total cost (flights, gear, food , motels, car hire, ancilliary sightseeing etc)- The family would spend more on restaurant meals in Queenstown before and after the walk than on hut fees! If we are really serious about getting kids that otherwise wouldn't get the opportunity into the outdoors, then what about directly targeting kids in South Auckland by tax payer funding school camps & outdoor education courses for low decile schools. The great walks are all a long way from South Auckland -surely direct funding is a better use of taxpayer's funds than free huts for kids whose families can well afford them. Peter Dymock

This thread has way to many generalisations in it. Firstly, most of the four percent I know who go tramping struggle to buy the gear they have (my pack is 20 years old and patched all over). No one I tramp with has ever complained about the hut fees that are charged, and I know Pacific Islanders and Maori who tramp, and as for the Asians, I have seen plenty of them on the smaller day walks which is great.

Christchurch has a higher proportion of Asians than Maoris and I meet quite a few in the hills. The women in particular can be pretty intrepid. The Japanese on Stewart Island are the ones who notice the kiwis scuttling about! Down here there are not too many Maori trampers or climbers, hunters yes, greenstone seekers, yes but very few Maori tramper/climbers. In the United States, African American hikers are such a rarity that I once read an article about one because it was such an astonishing thing that he hiked. Maybe they feel very vulnerable to rascism on trails. Tramping does seem to be a middle class thing. I belonged to a women climbing group and it was chockfull of physicists, academics, doctors etc. We had one woman who was on a benefit who I became good friends with. Most unusual though to have any one from the "working class" bracket.