John Walsh: Waitākere Ranges’ continued closure is a tragedy - it’s time to reopen the tracks

John Walsh on the Waitakere Ranges: 'Auckland Council needs to inform us if the pathogen is still spreading, or is under control. The tracks need to be made available again.' File photo / Alex Burton

OPINION

In 1975, I was a newly appointed senior park ranger in the Arataki district of what is now the Waitākere Ranges Regional Park. Also new was the Park Information Centre, Nature Trails complex, workshop, fire depot, native plant nursery and Chief Ranger’s residence.

This was an exciting time for park staff: a major development programme had been initiated to publicise the park and encourage school groups and the general public to visit and enjoy what the park had to offer. Up until this period, the main user group consisted of hardy trampers.

I was fortunate to be part of the amazing Auckland Regional Parks Service, which was staffed by innovative, passionate and dedicated park managers and park rangers. I had spent the previous decade walking all of the tramping tracks and streams, exploring the large and rugged hinterland of the ranges.

By this time, I had come to regard the Waitākere Ranges as a very special place. Checking the Nature Trails one morning, I encountered two men deep in conversation. One of them told me he envied my job. By way of explanation, he then introduced himself as Bing Harris, the then director-general of New Zealand’s National Parks Authority, curator of the country’s most stunning landscapes. He told me that the Waitākere Ranges constituted the “most important piece of parkland in New Zealand”, which gave rise to his envy. His point was that the ranges were not only the “lungs of Auckland”, but more importantly provided the city of 730,000 people with a huge range of recreational options: easy bush walks, backcountry tramping tracks, camping sites, and opportunities for nature study, picnicking, track running and finding solitude.

These were readily accessible for city dwellers, whereas all of the national parks were remote from large centres. He, and early proponents of and staunch supporters for a magnificent park in the Waitākere Ranges, such as Earl Vaile, Arthur Mead, and more recently the late Phil Jew and the late Judge Arnold Turner, would be horrified at the 2018 closure of a huge part of the network of 240km of tracks due to kauri dieback control measures. Phil Jew, the manager of regional parks in the former Auckland Regional Authority/Auckland Regional Council, ably proved that recreation and conservation in the Waitākere Ranges were compatible if wisely managed. It seems as though part of the closure will be permanent, with the exception of a few tracks that will be upgraded to a very high standard.

Sadly, the area of permanent closure lies in the core of the ranges, which the loggers did not reach before the park was established. This is where the last remaining virgin forest is found. Given Bing Harris’ statement, and my own observations after 38 years as a resident park ranger and kaitiaki of the ranges, this is an absolute tragedy. It seems to me that after 110 years of kauri logging over 83 per cent of the Waitākere forest, it has healed remarkably well, in spite of increasing visitor usage over the decades following that hugely damaging activity. To Māori, kauri is a taonga: I get that. To many thousands of park users, the track network is a taonga also.

Let us look at some reality.

All trees die. In my early exploration of the ranges, I came across dozens of groves of young kauri trees, where the mortality rate was as high as 90 per cent. This was due to vigorous regeneration resulting in competition for space and sunlight. A study of natural ecosystems (ecology) reveals that sometimes an entire species may come under threat, as in the “sudden death syndrome” of the New Zealand cabbage tree in the 1980s. A native forest is an ever-changing, dynamic entity. Before people arrived, the Waitākere Ranges were cloaked in mature native forest. Evidence suggests that prior to kauri dominance, tawa may have ruled the forest. Over millennia, the dominant tree species in a forest will continue to be replaced as part of a natural cycle.

Presently, kauri is in a state of natural decline, and will be replaced by another species.

John Walsh

So if kauri is in decline, why are we so concerned about dieback? Auckland Council pointed the finger at humans for spreading the dieback organism, hence the track closures. Yet I found dieback in remote areas of the ranges where it’s likely no human has walked. My observations pointed to water as a major vector for the spread of the Phytophthora pathogen. A lot of dieback is found on tracks, but also up to 50 metres off the tracks. In the Waitākere Ranges, tracks become water courses after heavy rain, and that water spills off the tracks into the forest. So which is the guilty party? Water or walkers? What about possums and feral pigs? Surely they spread the pathogen too? Research has shown individual trees will be more susceptible to a pathogen if stressed by drought, as the one in 2006 which may have been the trigger that activated the pathogen, first discovered in the ranges in the early 1970s but which was then having no impact on kauri trees. Auckland will continue to have droughts.

The decision to close tracks was made by way of an agreement between Auckland Council and the local iwi, without consulting a major user group: the walkers, trampers and track runners of Auckland. A groundswell of protest over the decision can be read in the Facebook pages of the Auckland Track Users Forum, and the Waitākere Track Opening Feedback site.

Auckland Council has admitted the spread of Phytophthora hasn’t stopped so continuation of the ban seems to be futile. Could this situation have been better handled? Tracks have been off limits for five years now, while kauri dieback control methods were explored. Auckland Council needs to inform us if the pathogen is still spreading, or is under control. The tracks need to be made available again.

I wonder if I will ever see again some of the unique features of the Waitākeres: the four or five “golden” kauri trees, otherwise healthy trees producing brown, not green, leaves year round; the stepped waterfall, featuring a series of symmetrical horizontal benches as a result of a quirk of geology and the cutting effect of water producing a giant staircase; the cave, difficult to access in a sheer cliff face, that housed a conscientious objector during World War II; the oblong kauri tree trunk with an enormous diameter when viewed from one aspect, but with one end resembling the sharp bow of a ship; another giant kauri which has seemingly been swallowed up by the earth, with no trunk, and whose lower branches emerge a metre or so above ground level; the sandstone cave, 150m above sea level with fossil shark’s teeth embedded in the sandstone roof; the stream that disappears underground for a hundred metres before emerging and resuming its course above ground; and the moa “graveyard”, where small mounds of moa gizzard stones contain carnelian from the Coromandel Peninsula.

John Walsh was a park ranger in Waitākere Ranges Regional Park for 38 years, based at Arataki and Huia.