Climate change consideration of revised Aoraki/Mt Cook National Park management plan
A plan to tackle the future management of Aoraki/Mt Cook National Park could become more focussed on climate change, with the location of various huts under the microscope. The Department of Conservations draft Aoraki/Mt Cook National Park management plan, which has been paused since February 2019 following a Supreme Court ruling ordering DOC to negotiate with local iwi, is likely to go back out to the public early next year. Before that, there will be a review of the 890 submissions on the plan, with alterations likely to be made according to the submissions. The plan, which was due for renewal as the last major amendments had been made in 2012, initially went to public consultation in 2018. In the lead-up, there had been public concerns about the number of visitors to Aoraki/Mt Cook National Park, and their effects on the environment, and concerns around climate change. READ MORE: * Aoraki/Mt Cook tourism industry decimated by Covid-19 * Recreation group calls for prioritisation of access to outdoors * Call for serious rethink of New Zealand's approach to tourism * Conservation Board acting chairman ponders Aoraki/Mt Cook National Park extension * Supreme Court ruling pauses Aoraki/Mt Cook National Park management plan Speaking at the Canterbury Aoraki Conservation Board meeting in Timaru on Friday, DOC operations manager Sally Jones said there were a number of different research proposals related to the revised plan. These included a spatial review of Aoraki/Mt Cook National Park, which could include a survey of the huts within the park and their vulnerability to climate change. We need to have a stocktake of the huts, and with the changing environment, there will be huts that might have to move, Jones said. Adaptation has to be considered. Its about considering whether it will be necessary to have huts in certain areas. DOC director planning permissions and land, Natasha Hayward, confirmed DOC huts, other visitor assets and historic infrastructure at significant risk to climate change, would be assessed and adaptive management actions identified. The original draft Plan contained a spatial plan to assist with managing the future use of the Aoraki/Mount Cook National Park village and front country areas around the village, Hayward said. DOC has received submissions on the spatial plan, and we will be using those submissions to determine what changes need to be made. Jones said there was also a need to address which areas of the national park aircraft could and could not access. She said there was a need to ask those hard questions and become more strategic in developing the plan for Aoraki/Mt Cook National Park. I am confident that the team working on the plan are really thinking big and broad, she said. Jones said there was also an opportunity to re-engage with submitters and work closely with user groups to improve the plan. The submission analysis will take until the end of the year, we will kick off our engagement process next year. One of the challenges is ensuring everyone is involved in the process. Theres a lot of moving parts. One of the more contentious aspects of the 2018 draft plan was the proposal of introducing a park and ride option, but Hayward said we will work through the submissions before we can make any decision about the Park and Ride. Hayward said although it was a new process to develop a draft Aoraki/Mount Cook National Park Management Plan, the starting point included all submissions received on the previously notified Plan. We will contact people and organisations who submitted on the first draft Plan, and explain how they can re-engage in the plan development process, she said. However, Federated Mountain Clubs president Jan Finlayson said there was no rush to amend the plan. The operative plan is solid, what was proposed back in 2018 was very poor by comparison, Finlayson said. We are hoping that Ngai Tahu and the Department Of Conservation take their time to get this right. Finlayson said FMC and Forest and Bird had previously asked for a complete rewrite of the 2018 version of plan. The plan must express the purpose of the National Parks Act, which is the preservation in perpetuity of the parks intrinsic worth, Finlayson said. Finlayson said any delay to the management plan process was preferable if it meant the plan absolutely respected New Zealanders right to light-footed recreation in the park.