Stranded trampers blamed for Lake Coleridge poo pr

"I have not seen any documented record of freedom camping in NZ let alone their impact, what I have seen is anecdotal reports at best, baseless allegations at worst. More often then not the feedback is from people who have vested interest against freedom camping. So I disagree entirely that there is a well documented record of freedom campers littering and crapping around the country." You should go into politics Militaris as you clearly thrive on reports when summary anecdotes from around the country clearly show there is a problem. Do you really think people would go out of their way to make allegations against freedom campers if there wasn't a problem with at least some of them. For years and years and years environmental groups have been telling the government that diary farming in its present form is seriously damaging waterways and draining aquifers. But politicians on the right & left have pandered to economic greed and the diary lobby. "We need to see reports they said and then we'll have select committee to discuss the reports. We will then issue a report on the select committees findings. On receiving that report we will set up a committee to investigate the results of the report about the reports" Meanwhile all those naughty environmentalists with vested interests were fabricating lies against dairy farmers. Anecdotes aren't always untrue and reports often lie. Sigh

where theres smoke, theres fire. when you have a massively increasing no of people travelling around in camper vans or camping randomly around the country without their own toilets, law of averages says you're going to get a massively increasing problem of people not using public toilets to go to the toilet, and dumping their rubbish

Dear Mr Key. Please, please, please insist that some (all?) of the money you are promising to help tourism infrastructure is used to build lots and lots of toilets all over the country at all those nice picnic areas which your men have put alongside all the highways. It is beyond my comprehension why these 'rest areas' do not have toilets. Oh, of course, silly me. Politicians FLY around the country so they never get 'caught short' on the highways!

DOC have indicated they will look at individual hut usage and remove those that arent used enough , what the exact criteria is for adequate usage is, wasnt revealed, at one stage they wanted to remove half of the huts in the ruahines, protest and clubs stepping in to look after huts stopped that.

I'm fairly sure that rest areas are the responsibility of the NZTA, and NZ's state highways aren't exactly starved for funding. If rest areas aren't adequate then I think it should be NZTA that's funding their improvement.

he died near bridge peak

Yes, NZTA might. But diverting funding from places where it's meant to be used for other stuff, simply because NZTA doesn't want to do its job properly (or what we think should be its job), will just create new problems elsewhere. It'll also be harder to recognise those problems elsewhere, because official records will indicate that they have all the funding they supposedly need. Convincing the government to allocate money more rationally will address it. This is unlikely but until it happens, actually fixing the problems is also unlikely.

All freedom camping is still allowed on any NZTA land anyway, they put safety first and do not want fatigue or tired people driving.