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Parks for the people everywhere

Whether you’re a climber, tramper, kayaker or weekend picnicker, chances are you’ll be familiar with New Zealand’s National Parks.The parks have a proud heritage dating back to 1887 when Maori chief Te Heuheu Tukino IV gifted the summits Mt Tongariro, Mt Ngauruhoe and Mt Ruapehu to the Crown. There are now 14 national parks, ranging from the barren beauty of Tongariro through to the golden beaches of Abel Tasman, the lush rainforest of Westland and the piercing mountains of Aoraki/Mt Cook. As well as conserving unique land areas and eco-systems, the parks have a comprehensive network of backcountry huts, campgrounds and thousands of kilometres of tracks that enhance public use and enjoyment.So our National and Forest Parks seem something we can be rightly proud of but just how do they stack up against those in other countries? Wilderness writers investigate national park management in the United States, Australia and Britain.

Clockwise from left: The Flinders range, Flinders range National park, South australia; Temple of Sinawava, Zion Np, USa; Kinder peak, peak District National park, UK

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34 april 2008

Yellowstone The United States – pleasuring grounds

In the beginning there was Yellowstone, the world’s first-ever national park, preserved for posterity by President Ulysses S. Grant in 1872.The protection given Yellowstone, with its geysers and buffalo,

encouraged other nations to set aside and conserve outstanding natural areas so that now there are more than 1000 national parks in over 100 nations across the planet.

The Yellowstone National Park Act placed the watershed of the Yellowstone River under the “exclusive control of the Secretary of the Interior”, making the land “reserved and withdrawn from set-tlement, occupancy, or sale under the laws of the United States, and dedicated and set apart as a public park or pleasuring-ground”.

The United States and its territories are blessed with topography and climate of great variety: from the glaciers and Arctic sea ice of Alaska to the volcanoes and tropical wilderness of Hawaii to the desert landscape and yawning gorges of the Grand Canyon and eve-rything in between. A variety of designations exist under the NPS umbrella – National Parks, National Battlefields, and the like – but all are afforded a basic protection and standard of preservation. All told, the National Park system encompasses about 32,116,000ha, slightly larger than the whole of New Zealand. The largest, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve in Alaska, is about one-fifth the size of New Zealand (and at 5,341,900ha comprises over 16 per cent of the entire system’s area).

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From the outset, the parks were established to “conserve the scen-ery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations”. The NPS’s mission, plainly stated, is “to promote and regulate the use of” the national parks and associated properties.

Striking the balance between preservation and access is a Her-culean task proportionate to this huge nation but one to which the Americans have accorded a massive budget and like resources to match the massive scope and heavy use: more than $NZ3 billion budgeted for 2008 and a tidal wave of visitors totalling over 270 mil-lion each year. Each private vehicle pays an average fee of $US20 for seven days’ access.

National Parks and Monuments, as defined by the NPS, are regions wherein “hunting, mining and consumptive activities are not author-ized,” nor any private building of structures, roads, etc., not within the specific auspices of park business. The Parks and Monuments are maintained in strict accordance with the NPS mission – the primary difference between the two designations (Park versus Monument) is that an American National Park is established by an act of Congress, whereby a National Monument can be publicly declared by the Presi-dent (under the Antiquities Act of 1906). Other NPS-administered properties, such as National Preserves, allow “continued public hunt-ing, trapping, oil/gas exploration and extraction.”

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Clockwise from left: Jackson lake, Grand Tetons Np; rangers look after more than 30 million hec-tares of parks and reserves; an egret amongst the cypress, Everglades Np; Backpacker Crossing Glacial Moraine, Wrangell-St. Elias Np and preserve; Wildlife and human visitors interact in Yellowstone Np

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36 april 2008

Part of the management of all NPS lands is that of pest eradication. The NPS uses Integrated Pest Management (IPM) in conducting varied pest eradication programmes.

Pest eradication goes in hand with all the other prickly policies the NPS must manage. Case in point is Channel Islands NP off the coast of southern California, where feral pigs on Santa Cruz Island were decimat-ing native flora, rooting archaeological sites, and damaging the habitat of the endangered Channel Islands fox, the smallest North American canid. The pigs also lured golden eagles to the area, which were not only eager for an easy meal of plump piglet but also keen hunters of the diminutive foxes.

In 2005, hunts were authorized for the pigs and conducted by New Zealand’s Paeroa-based Prohunt Inc. at the behest of the National Park Service and the non-profit Nature Conservancy, owner of 75 per cent of Santa Cruz island.

A few years before the pig eradication, bald eagles – once plentiful in the area and which prefer a fish and/or carrion diet – were reintroduced to the island partly to assist in the control of the golden eagles.

“Bald eagles are highly territorial, and … nest on the perimeter of the islands because their diet is mostly marine-based,” according to Brian Latta, a biologist with the University of California at Santa Cruz-based Predatory Bird Research Group.

These interwoven tactics of the Park Service and other public and private agencies have yielded results. Not only are the islands and foxes (slowly) recovering from the pigs’ destruction, but in April 2006 the first bald eagle chick in more than 50 years hatched on Santa Cruz.

Across the system, ‘problem’ bears habituated by human food are removed to the backcountry, intra-agency disputes concerning the man-agement of wildfires continue but always in front of these and other management headaches is the simple tramper on holiday.

Many American national parks boast front-country access and ameni-ties that would do Disney proud; Yosemite, Zion and others use extraor-dinarily efficient CNG-fuelled trams and buses, and concessionaires

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provide everything from four star dining and lodging to ferry services. Front-country campgrounds (often administered by third-party compa-nies) cater to everything from massive bus-sized RVs sporting satellite dishes to tent campers in search of small, more secluded sites. Gateway towns further cater to the souvenir-hording masses, but it’s the Ameri-can back-country of the park system which draws those yearning for a rugged and remote expanse.

Huts are not common in much of the American wilderness; fewer still are found under the auspices of the National Park Service. Tents are a near-must in many parks, given the abundance of wildlife. Nearly all back-country trekking must be self-contained, and the ‘pack it in, pack it out’ adage applies up to and including solid waste in many regions. To aid in limiting impact, wilderness permits are required year-round in most parks for any overnight stay. The permits are available at no cost, and can often be had the day of the trip, though a limited number are available any given day.

- Craig Carey

FACTS AND FIGURES AT A GLANCENational Park Service (US Department of the Interior)website www.nps.gov Founded 1916Budget NZ$3,124,000,000employees 20,000, volunteers: 140,000annual visitors 270 millionarea 32,100,000ha Highest Point 6194m Mt Denali/McKinley, Denali NPlowest Point -86m (Badwater, California), Death Valley NPtallest trees in the world Coastal redwood (Sequoia sempervirens), Redwood NPoldest living things in the world Great Basin bristlecone pine (Pinus longaeva) – the oldest ever known tree, 4844 years-old Prometheus, was cut down for research in 1964 in what is now Great Basin NP. Methuselah, nearly 4800 years-old, currently the oldest known, is located in eastern California’s Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest and is managed by the US Forest Service.

Clockwise from left: El Morro Fort, San Juan NHS; Forest along irely lake Trail, Olympia Np; Tagging Elk, Yellowstone Np