Stewart Island: The last frontier

It may have been inevitable that Stewart Island would become a national park, but not everyone is happy about the proposal, writes STEVE SOLE.

Martyn Clark is blowing for all he's worth into the firebox at Mason Bay Hut on the West Coast of Stewart Island. It's been a torrentially wet day and his partner, Louisa Collis, sniffing from a cold, is hanging socks, shirts and shorts over the inside line.

The English tourists came to Stewart Island "because we like tramping and we heard that it's still pretty much like it was when people first arrived here hundreds of years ago," says Collis.

She's right, and because it is the least modified island in New Zealand it has just been a matter of when, not if, it becomes a national park.

Next week Conservation Minister Sandra Lee and Prime Minister Helen Clark will announce during a visit to the island that 93 per cent, or 163,000ha, of it is to be designated not only Rakiura National Park - New Zealand's 14th.

Under the National Parks Act, such parks must "contain scenery of such distinctive quality, ecological systems, or natural features so beautiful, unique or scientifically important that their preservation is in the national interest."

For most visitors, especially those arriving by air, the island's scenery makes the first impact. Leonard Cockayne wrote nearly 100 years ago: "It's hard to speak of the scenery of Stewart Island without using a superabundance of superlatives."

Gordon Ell, a member of the New Zealand Conservation Authority, wrote in 1999: "Stewart Island, with its rich forests and wildlife, its granite mountains, senescent rivers, its long harbours and wild coasts, presents landscapes so beautiful that the island could qualify as national park in visual terms alone."

In backing national park status, the Southland conservancy's report to the New Zealand Conservation Authority looked at several criteria, including scenery, ecological systems, fauna, flora, waahi tapu and historical aspects.

It cited six outstanding scenic features: the Ruggedy Mountains, distinguished by orange-brown rock bluffs and crags protruding from the forest; the numerous bush-topped inshore islets and stacks; the sprawling high-rise dunes and stonefields of Mason Bay; the granite domes with the dominant Fraser Peaks of Gog and Magog, which are also listed as sites of national importance in the Geopreservation Index; the summit of Mt Anglem (Hananui); and the vast wetlands of Freshwater Valley, which are listed as wetlands of ecological and representative importance.

Botanist Hugh Wilson sees Stewart Island as "a remnant of old New Zealand - from wild coastline to scrub-covered tops." Neville Peat wrote in his book on Stewart Island, "In a wide geographical context the island has been likened to an 'ecological stepping stone' between the mainland and the sub-antarctic zone."

The Southland conservancy's report says, "The sea-to-summit sequence of habitats is uninterrupted, the ecosystems flow seamlessly from one to another."

Phillip Smith, a fifth-generation Stewart Islander who runs a kiwi-spotting night tour, says the island has 25,000 Stewart Island kiwi. Visitors are even likely to see kaka around the only built-up area on the island, Oban, in Halfmoon Bay, which has 390 local inhabitants..

The island is also refuge to the kakapo, the Southern New Zealand dotterel, the South Island saddleback, and more than 20 species of breeding seabirds. With no introduced trout, there are 15 native fish species. And a significant number of whitetail deer have lived on the island for about 100 years.

Introduced pests include the possum, wild cats and three rat species. Thankfully, the island is still free of stoats, ferrets and weasels.

Stewart Island is home to nine podocarp tree species and 21 threatened plants, some of which are endemic or occur only on the island. A noticeable exception is the absence or extreme rarity of beech, kowhai and mahoe.

Maori arrived on the island 700 years ago, and it has numerous waahi tapu sites. Among the most treasured are the middens and urupa along the sandy isthmus of the Neck. Mt Anglem (Hananui), at 980m the island's highest peak, has been recognised in the Ngai Tahu settlement legislation.

The Stewart Island Conservation Management Strategy suggests management of 11 historic sites. Five of these, the Port Pegasus shipbuilding base, Tin Range mining relics, the Port William special settlement site, Ulva Island and the Kaipipi whaling base, are of national importance.

Stewart Island's land status includes 84,500ha in four nature reserves (a higher status than national park), 19,200ha as 24 scenic reserves, and the remaining 59,300ha as 48 stewardship areas.

A 1980 National Parks Authority report advised against establishing a national park. In 1981 the Federated Mountain Clubs proposed a 63,000ha "wilderness area." In 1999 the Conservation Authority asked the Department of Conservation to assess "whether national park status is more appropriate than the current status."

Over 12 weeks, 437 submissions were received and nearly 60 per cent of them, from throughout the country, objected to national park status if it meant an end to recreational hunting of whitetail deer.

Greg Lind, DoC's area manager of southern islands, says there are about 15,000 deer on the island, but hunters say there are far fewer. Lind points out that eradication of introduced species on DoC estates is a national policy and "can only be changed by politicians."

But he says the department is committed to continuing recreational deer-hunting on Stewart Island. "We have built five new hunter huts and plan three more this year."

Lance LeQuesne moved here 15 years ago for the hunting - now he's a spokesman for the Stewart Island Whitetail Deer Hunters Club. "DoC may not be able to afford [total eradication] now but what about in the future?" he asks.

"We'd like to change the classification of the Stewart Island whitetail deer from a noxious animal to a game animal.

"The deer aren't hurting the forest and the hunters are controlling them. Deer don't climb trees and eat birds' eggs. Possums, rats and cats do."

Lind acknowledges this and says $180,000 has been granted for possum control.

LeQuesne adds, "For hunters, Stewart Island is the Holy Grail of hunting trips in New Zealand. Everybody's for the park, but we just want to protect the hunting for all New Zealanders. It's our right."

The Southland District Council's Rakiura National Park Community Impact Assessment predicts a 7.4 per cent annual increase in visitors, taking numbers from the present 22,000 to 65,000 by 2015, and suggests two further hotels will be needed to cope with the influx, each with between 50 and 70 rooms. Yet the district plan has no specific exclusions for commercial development.

Community Board chairman Ted Rooney says the community drew up a concept plan, but acknowledges it has no teeth. All locals look at Queenstown in dread and note how, after 75 per cent of locals opposed a casino in that town, it ended up with two.

Dr Britt Moore, who used Stewart Island as a case study in her PhD thesis on sustainable tourism development and now lives on the island, says, "A public meeting last October told the council it didn't want large-scale commercial development. Another meeting planned for December didn't go ahead.

"The council needs more than a strategy - they need real rules. But there's got to be something before a national park is declared or it's going to get out of control."

The district council's manager of resource planning, Bruce Halligan, says, "We'll look to get some input from some landscape consultants and also possibly some additional planning consultant resource.

"We have three planning staff here for 10 per cent of the land area of New Zealand. We're pretty stretched in dealing with these sorts of issues."

Hassles aside, DoC's Greg Lind concludes, "The old status of Stewart Island protected some of the values but didn't recognise them. National park status does give mana to this island. I think that's appropriate."