Conserv-Vision Conference Proceedings
Th e U n iv ersit y of W aikat o
A CELEBRATION OF 20 YEARS OF CONSERVATION BY
NEW ZEALAND’S DEPARTMENT OF CONSERVATION
CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS EDITED BY:
Dr Bruce Clarkson, Dr Priya Kurian, Todd Nachowitz, & Dr Hamish Rennie
© 2009 Mick Abbott
Article Title: “Fostering in the recreational public a greater sense of involvement in the conservation
estate”
Author(s): Abbott, Mick
Publication Date: 20 February 2009
Source: Proceedings of the Conserv-Vision Conference, University of Waikato, 2-4 July 2007
Published by: The University of Waikato, Private Bag 3105, Hamilton, New Zealand
Stable URL: www.waikato.ac.nz/wfass/conserv-vision
Pr o ce e d i n g s o f t h e C o n s e r v - V i s i o n C o n f e r e n c e • T h e U n i v e r s i t y o f W a i k a t o
w w w . w a i k a t o . a c . n z / w fa s s / C o n s e r v - V i s i o n
Mick Abbott
Fostering in the recreational public a greater sense of involvement in the
conservation Estate
Mick Abbott
Department of Design Studies
University of Otago
PO Box 56
Dunedin 9054
New Zealand
email: <[email protected]>
Abstract
There is a shift in emphasis in the management of the conservation estate towards
fostering people’s participation in the conservation estate. This paper investigates
how ‘being involved’ in natural landscapes might be prompted through the use of
alternate designs for tracks, boardwalks, bridges and track markers. The
theoretical underpinning for this investigation comes from an emphasis on
experiential and temporal qualities of involvement. This phenomenological
perspective considers how the conservation estate is engaged, rather than
conceptualised. The paper suggests there is significant potential to design facilities
that heighten users’ sense of involvement while at the same time expressing New
Zealanders’ evocative, sustainable and careful relationship with our ecologically
indigenous landscapes. The research presents three recommendations namely: (1)
there is an opportunity to use facilities, including huts, bridges, tracks, and
boardwalks, to express a participatory relationship with our most ecologically
indigenous landscapes; (2) there is potential to understand and model the values of
people in the conservation estate in terms of their temporal and narrative qualities;
and (3) solutions should be developed that are not only safe but also create
cognitive and kinaesthetic senses of ‘being involved’ in the landscape. It concludes
that it is timely to consider the development of a handbook that could provide first,
tools to evaluate on-site the experiential potential of existing and proposed tracks
and other structures, and second, underlying principles with examples of best
practice at national and international levels.
Key words: landscape, New Zealand, participation, structure design,
temporality, track design
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Fostering in the recreational public a greater sense of involvement in the conservation estate
Introduction
New Zealand’s remotest, wildest, least touched, and most ecologically indigenous land make
up today’s public conservation estate. Over the past two hundred years such landscapes have
been described in many ways. These include being unpleasant, sublime, fruitless, a frontier, a
hunter’s paradise, unspoilt, dangerous and a playground.
For example the southwest corner of the South Island has been described by one settler as
“desolate and repulsive in the extreme” (Polack 1838 quoted in Shepard 1969:25), by another as
a site to sow “in the wilderness the seeds of future wealth and greatness” (Paulin 1889:66), by
yet another on the lookout for opportunity as “virtually useless” (Biggars 1896 quoted in Begg
and Begg 1973:360), and to the first superintendent of the Department of Tourist and Health
Resorts as a potential “big-game forest” (Doone 1903, quoted in Begg and Begg 1973:296).
More recently it is, to the tourist operator, “an unspoilt and remote wilderness of many
moods” (Fiordland Travel 2000:14), to the tourist, such as Douglas Adams of Hitchhikers
Guide to the Galaxy fame, “one of the most astounding pieces of land anywhere on God’s
earth, and one’s first impulse, standing on a cliff top surveying it all, is simply to burst into
spontaneous applause” (Adams 1990 quoted in Apse and Dennis 1998:8), to the adventurer it is
a site of extreme adrenaline – a place where “we’re about to die” (Vass and Thomson 1980:14),
while to the Department of Conservation (2007:15) it is an ecological entity that is “almost a
biogeographic island”.
These selective images reveal no singular understanding of this country’s ecologically
indigenous landscapes. David Eggleton (1999:7) states “the landscape of Aotearoa New
Zealand is our cultural centre of gravity, our leading literary theme, our dominant metaphor.
We inscribe it with our hopes and dreams: the land is our waka, our location beacon, a site of
layered history… It is a map of our assumptions, desires and projections… To describe New
Zealand is to invent it.” It can be argued, that by applying Eggleton’s perspective to the above
descriptions of the conservation estate, each reveal not so much the inherent qualities of a
landscape ‘out-there’, but rather their own authors’ culturally bound positions from which they
build a relationship with the land: a relationship that consequently shapes how they
understand and engage with it. Or in other words, and adapting Eggleton’s claim, ‘to describe
the conservation estate is to invent it’.
The range of perspectives people hold about the conservation estate reveal a wider process of
transformation and mutation in attitudes. It is certain that such conceptualisations are
multiplicitous, and diverse. No single consensus on its definition is possible.
To the early European settlers these unmodified landscapes were heathen and alien. They
were a place of hardship and emptiness where no Christian God resided (Alington 2002).
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Then, as opportunities for minerals, timber, pasture and settlements were sought and found,
they became a frontier: a site to explore and find fortune. The most rugged and remote areas,
those that proved resistant to the survey, the mine, the timber mill, the farm and the settlement
were given other meanings. They became scenic wonders and tourist destinations. Rather
than remaining a frontier they were reinterpreted as sublime and sacred places where one
could not help feeling insignificant and being reminded of one s own mortality (Cronon
1995:73).
Many contemporary framings of the conservation estate have their basis in those of the
nineteenth century. Popular wilderness images, like those produced in the tourism-led ‘100%
Pure!’ campaign, have their roots in the picturesque sensibilities of that time. Indeed Geoff
Park (2006) argues that an adherence, and even nostalgia, for such aesthetic principles
continues to constrain the values and possibility that the conservation estate offers Pākehā
New Zealand’s relationship with the conservation estate in the twenty-first century.
Other descriptions of these landscapes echo frontier-type relationships. Nowadays the
conservation estate is also a site for first ascents, longest journeys and epic adventures. In these
different interpretations, from the immigrant, settler, miner, farmer, hunter, climber, tourist,
concessionaire, conservator and so on, is revealed a wider process of change in personal and
societal attitudes to landscape. Indeed it is as if this spread of positions are part of the braids of
an always shifting river, where one in time moves, splits and relocates into other evolving
stances.
Such positions are often contested. Geoff Kearsley (1997:14) notes these places are a site for an
individual’s “personal cognition, emotion, values and experiences to construct concepts of
wilderness with which others may vehemently disagree”. Even a cursory reading of the
various publications of the New Zealand Deerstalkers Association, Federated Mountain Clubs,
New Zealand Alpine Club, Forest and Bird, and tourism based NGOs support this analysis. In
other work Kearsley, Kliskey, Higham and Higham (1999), consider that these debates are
caused by the pressure of increasing demand constrained by diminishing supply which, in
turn, is due to the ongoing introduction of facilities and technology into the conservation
estate. Thus they state “further work will also demonstrate the rate at which wilderness is
declining, through changing perceptions and development patterns, and it is hoped that this
[research] will provide the basis for the preservation of wilderness on one hand and the
opportunity to maximise wilderness experiences for as many as possible on the other”
(1999:20). Yet this description also directs (Eggleton’s analysis would suggest ‘invents’) a
certain understanding of and relationship with the conservation estate: one in which the binary
business model of supply and demand, and with it a conceptualisation of landscape as a
commodity, directs management solutions as the means by which cultural difference might be
negotiated.
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Fostering in the recreational public a greater sense of involvement in the conservation estate
Daniel Clayton (2000), in terms of the west coast of North America, notes that debates that
pitch use against preservation continue to polarise positions and inevitably ‘squeeze out or
assimilate other voices’. There is also potential for a similar diminishing of culturally diverse
understandings of the conservation estate in this country. Tourism New Zealand in its
publication ‘100 Years of Pure Progress’, which celebrates the history of tourism development
in New Zealand, considers the conservation estate solely in terms of an expanding tourism
narrative. Hence, in describing the Fiordland area it states, despite acknowledgement of
widespread pre-European Māori activity in the region (for example see both Adams and
Evison (1993) and Fiordland National Park Management Plans (1996, 2007), that “Milford
Sound [was] discovered by sea in the 1820s [though] it was 1888 before McKinnon Pass was
discovered and land access heralded the beginning of New Zealand’s wonder walk” (2001:15).
Such a perspective also reinforces an understanding of the conservation estate as a landscape
without a cultural past, and by inference a future equally free of diverse cultural qualities.
However, while an unraveling of the hegemonic positioning of one perspective over another
could be attempted, my reasons for presenting this spread of perspectives lies elsewhere. For
my purpose is to suggest that descriptions, relationships, engagements and ‘inventions’ of the
conservation estate are culturally dynamic, contested, and malleable, and, therefore likely to
remain so. Figure 1 schematically describes such shifts over time. In noting these moving
braid-like understandings it suggests that not only have people’s relationship with the
conservation estate changed over time, but more importantly it is inevitable that they will
continue to change and evolve in the future.
Figure 1: schematic view of changing understandings of the conservation estate over time.
Hence the direction of this paper is to first ask how could further shifts in our understanding
of, and relationship with, the conservation estate be prompted and second how such changes
could be manifest. Indeed if descriptions of the conservation estate contributes to how it is
understood and engaged then which descriptions being newly circulated might stimulate other
possibilities in our relationships with it?
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Figure 2: reverse of recent Department of Conservation business cards
Recently the business cards given out by staff working for the Department of Conservation
have been changed (see Figure 2). On the reverse is written “tiakina, hākinakinatia, whakauru:
protect, enjoy, be involved”. In terms of developing its volunteer projects, which include
ecological and archaeological restoration, and also increased partnerships at community levels,
the Department of Conservation has been active. There is also renewed emphasis towards
fostering people’s participation in the conservation estate by managers of the conservation
estate. The 2006 ‘New Zealand Recreation Summit: Mountains to Sea – putting Kiwis in touch
with their country’ concluded with a call for a national outdoor recreation strategy. I consider
the call to ‘be involved’ supports the Department of Conservation’s statutory obligation to
‘foster recreation’ and is part of an emerging emphasis to further understand and support the
intrinsic values in people’s relationship with the conservation estate.
Figure 3: Waterfall near Supper Cove, Fiordland National Park
In Figure 3 is an image taken by the author on the Dusky Track. It is a poor cousin of a style of
wilderness photograph these days made popular by the likes of Andris Apse and Craig Potton.
In it can be imagined a glimpse of an Eden-like nature whose cycles and processes might
remain as undisturbed today as before people settled this land. Yet most telling in images of
this ilk is what is left out. Environmental historian Tom Griffiths notes what is presented is a
relationship where “photographers omit the eroded path that led them to their view” (1991:18).
For example when Apse presents an image, such as in ‘Dusky Sunset’, of the sun setting over
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Fostering in the recreational public a greater sense of involvement in the conservation estate
the fiords, forests and mountain flanks he removes from his compelling vision the technology
and resources essential in the production of such an image. Absent are the various
photographic lens, tripods, film and other equipment used in the capture of the image. Also
missing are the helicopters used for access, his camping equipment, food and also the GPS
device used “to calculate when the sun would be setting down the middle of my composition
[before returning] at the right time of the year” (2007). Yet were Apse or, in the case of Figure
3, myself to turn the camera back on our technology and ourselves a different image of nature
would be evident. For in the manufacture and distribution of the various proprietary
materials, fabrics and technology by which the conservation estate is engaged, as well as the
environmental resources used to transport us to such places, a significant impact on the
environment is produced. Indeed whether it is in the local pollutants caused by car, and
helicopter, emissions or in a growing dependence in what Bishop (1996) terms ‘high t(r)ech’
equipment, the more one strives for a leave-no-trace ethic in the conservation estate the greater
the potential for creating more significant impacts elsewhere (Abbott 2008).
It is for this reason that environmental historian William Cronon considers that wilderness, in
its more prevalent manifestations, manufactures “a view of the world that severs humans and
human activity from their place in nature” (1995:81). Rather than being a guide to how we
might live within nature, it constructs a relationship that renders irrelevant questioning the
technologies, materials and impacts needed to be here. For Cronon this is a significant
impediment to developing an “ethical, sustainable, honourable, human place in nature” and
consequently the manner of our relationship with our most ecologically precious landscapes
“poses a serious threat to responsible environmentalism” (ibid).
One line of inquiry, and one I am pursuing elsewhere, investigates the role of equipment and
technology on the one hand, and interpretation on the other, in both opening-up and
constraining possibility in experiencing the conservation estate (Abbott 2002, 2006, 2007). As
Campanella (1997:30) states “today our efforts to simplify our lives by snuggling close to
nature seem, paradoxically, to require the materiel of a small army: global positioning systems,
Kryptonite flashlights, polyethylene underpants, Gore-Tex outerwear, and satellite phones”.
What these artifacts evoke is a lifestyle that says less about ecologically indigenous landscapes
and more about an individual’s identity, or as Diskin (1998:62) declares “you are what you
own”.
However, this paper, in the context of presenting a ‘Conserv-Vision’ relevant to the
Department of Conservation, seeks to identify substantive directions that might enhance a
sense of participation in the facilities provided for users in the conservation estate. Hence it
will present, in the form of three recommendations, findings from ongoing research
undertaken into the tracks, boardwalks, bridges and track markers provided for users that
could better prompt a sense of ‘being involved’.
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1. Develop solutions that use the meeting of ‘facility’ and landscape as an opportunity to
express a participatory relationship with the land.
In its environmental care code the Department of Conservation summarises its leave-no-trace
ethic with the principle ‘Toitu te whenua (Leave the land undisturbed)’. While intended as a
guide for the behaviour of the general public it is pertinent to reflect on the physical
relationship between the facilities the public uses and the conservation land on which they are
sited. What the following table of images show is attempting to provide for people while still
leaving the land undisturbed are essentially incompatible goals. Instead what they describe
and reveal are some of the qualities of our current relationship with the conservation estate: the
way in which user, manager, facility and land choose to meet and interact.
Figure 4 was taken at Milford
Sound with Mitre Peak behind.
The label reads “infectious
substance: in case of damage or
leakage immediately notify public
health authority”. Contained in
each is both faecal waste collected
from nearby huts and the
environmental footprint from fuel
used to helicopter and then truck
them out.
Figure 5 was also taken at Milford
Sound. If you look carefully you
will see the plants have been
discretely pruned so the native
flora do not grow so tall as to
obstruct the view from the carpark.
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Figure 6 shows one of the many
footings cut out of the rock so the
recent French Ridge Hut can be
bolted to the ground. In the lowerfront of the image you can see the
saw marks on the rock.
Figure 7 shows a hole cut through
the canopy between the Track
Burn and Port Craig, made by
felling trees, so helicopters might
deposit temporary huts for track
work in the area.
Figure 8 shows a rough concrete
footing poured to form an even
surface on which to fix a standard
bridge solution across the upper
West Matukituki River.
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Figure 9 shows discarded materials
surplus from building a bridge and
hidden for a number of years
among nearby bush.
Figure 10 shows a small bridge
that has been swept downstream
in a flood some time earlier. It
should also be noted that because
this structure is registered in the
VAMS database its destruction
would have been noted during
routine inventory checks.
Figure 11 shows a track marker in
the process of being ‘popped’
before inevitably falling to the
ground. At the same time the
galvanized nails used will be
enveloped by the tree trunk before
a knot forms around what for the
tree, and the national park, is an
alien material.
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Figure 12 is a bridge recently
installed across the lower Beans
Burn. Brought in by helicopter the
installation team have struggled to
make it fit.
Figure 13 is a close up of the far
end of the bridge and one can see
where the three storey high rock
on which the bridge rests has had
to be sawn to accommodate the
bridge structure.
Figure 14 is a still from video
footage of a digger working on the
upper Rob Roy Glacier track that
for reasons of access was
helicoptered in.
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Figure 15 is an example of a track
made by digger. Its width and
form, while intended for people to
walk on, is that of a vehicle track
set by the obvious requirement
that a digger must be able to travel
along it during its construction.
Figure 16 shows the pink paint
marks where drill holes have been
made so rocks the digger was
unable to dislodge or break up can
be shattered by explosives.
Obviously leaving the land undisturbed while providing for people is highly problematic. It is
for this reason that Cronon (1995:88) states that the myth or illusion of wilderness “is that we
can somehow leave nature untouched by our passage.” Yet the recent ‘Tracks and Outdoor
Visitor Structures Standard’, while rich in technical detail on the appropriate standard of
facilities and structure only states that “benching and raised formation may be used provided
any negative impacts are minimised” (2004:31), leaves unspoken any requirement any criteria
by which such effects might be evaluated or avoided. Indeed it can be argued that by not
actively acknowledging that the land is affected by the choice and design of facility it leaves
unspoken the critical need to consider, in our facilitating our engagement of the conservation
estate, ‘how should the land be touched?’
This point can be developed further. The New Zealand Government has signaled an
overarching goal of developing our sense of identity. In this light government and industry
alike champion – in initiatives like <www.betterbydesign.org.nz> – the design-led endeavours
of, for example Fisher and Paykel, Formway, Furnware, Icebreaker, and MacPac, as helping
New Zealand better express a sense of who we are.
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It can be argued that the type of facilities we build in our most ecologically indigenous
landscapes, those places that can only be Aotearoa New Zealand, offer an even more unique
and distinctive opportunity to express, both to ourselves and the growing numbers of
international tourists, our particular identity. Might the facilities by which we engage the
conservation estate be as equally iconic and memorable as the places they allow us to visit?
Could it be possible that when people walk the Milford Track and visit Milford Sound they
find they are captivated not only by the sheer cliffs and plunging waterfalls but also the
facilities that along the way express New Zealanders’ evocative, sustainable and careful
relationship with our ecologically indigenous landscapes?
Nor do the solutions have to be complex. For example current work by researchers and
students at the University of Otago include investigation of a screw that, while fixing track
markers to trees, also slowly taps its way out of a tree as the trunk grows. And also track
markers, that by referring to the species of tree on which they are fixed allow walkers to gain a
deeper knowledge of the flora – so they not only find their way through the forest but also into
it. Other research includes investigating combining seats, interpretation and signs into simple
single solutions and also how shelter designs could be exemplars of leading cradle-to-cradle
sustainable design principles.
It can be argued that a real opportunity to describe, and even inscribe, our relationship with the
conservation estate lies, as in the case of the bridges in figures 8 and 12, in taking the time to
carefully work through the issues that are presented by where a facility meets the land, and
culture meets nature. It is meeting points such as these that offer the potential to progress a
participatory relationship with the land. Or in other words tiakina, hākinakinatia, whakauru:
protect, enjoy, be involved.
2. Understand and model the values of people in the conservation estate in terms of their
temporal and narrative qualities.
The previous section considered the meeting of facility and land as the site and opportunity for
expressing a deeper relationship between people and place. Such an approach also has
implications on how to understand and model user’s participation in the conservation estate.
Geoff Park (2006:177) states there are two landscapes that “have equal power in shaping New
Zealanders’ sense of themselves. In the one in which most of us live, one of humanity’s most
dramatic transformations of nature anywhere has removed indigenous life almost entirely.
The other one, in which our living is prohibited, is still as solidly indigenous as anywhere on
Earth, and as devoid of humans; maintained as though it were a world without us. Our terra
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nullius, no less”. In terms of the South Island the following map in Figure 17, by splitting the
conservation estate from the rest of the land, visualises this separation.
Figure 17: Park’s two landscapes. The conservation estate is on the right.
Park (2006:202), asks us to look for middle landscapes where a shared and compatible urge
might be “to progress both people and the land’s indigenous life”. In looking at the map in
Figure 17 it could be assumed that such locations might lie along those borders where that
which is and isn’t the conservation estate meet. Yet might such analysis elide the experiential
and qualitative nature of people’s involvement in our landscapes?
Figure 18: 1988-89 Journey on left, 2006-7 Journey on the right (spatial scale).
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The two maps in Figure 18 broadly describe two distinct journeys that travelled the South
Island from south to north. In the one on the left is marked a journey made by the author
during 1988 and 1989, while the on the right is marked one made recently by Lani Evans, Helen
Nortje and Bronwen Waters during 2006 and 2007. Following the maps it can be seen that
spatially both journeys, apart from through Fiordland, follow similar routes. While separated
in time by nearly two decades it could be expected that the landscape experience would be
strongly similar.
Figure 19: 1988-89 Journey on left, 2006-7 Journey on the right (temporal scale). The gap
between each dot is one eighth of the total number of days the journey took.
However by shifting the map scale from a spatial scale to one that is temporal reveals
significant differences in the journeys. When, as in Figure 19, the most recent is divided into
eight equal sections of days travelled (in this case eight sections of ten days) the southern
region is reduced in scope, the central section expands, while the northern section also
contracts. When the same method is applied to the earlier trip the Fiordland region is made
large while the northern section is considerably shortened. This analysis suggests, when
temporal duration rather than spatial distance is considered, different experiential qualities
generate different understandings of, and relationships with, the same locations.
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Figure 20: ‘Sketch of the Middle Island of New Zealand reduced from an original Maori sketch
made for Mr. Halswell in either 1841 or 1842’.
(Published in Appendix to Journals of House of Representatives, 1894.)
This approach is derived from a remarkable map (Figure 20), drawn by local Māori. Its
configuration, rather than portray the spatial arrangement of what is now called the South
Island, describes patterns of movement around the coast. Stretches of the coastline expand or
contract according to the degree of activity in an area. Hence areas with little safe harbour are
collapsed spatially while areas with more settlements, resources and activity, such as the southwest, are rendered more substantially. The South Island itself is drawn long and very thin
accentuating the importance of the coastline while features including harbours, reefs, tidal
zones, rivers and settlements are recorded as much for their role as waypoints when following
different routes.
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When compared with a spatially accurate representation of the South Island the map is
unrecognisable. Yet, as a map that conveys the ways by which the land was inhabited, it is
strongly evocative. Indeed this map can be read, not as an amalgam of form, but as the
bringing together of many journeys. Dimensioned by the directions and time taken to travel, it
reveals the temporal attributes of landscape experience. What these maps point to is that the
conservation estate is experientially shaped as much through the tempo and manner in which
they are travelled as according to the specific locales. Hence changes in modes and rates of
travel, as well as the introduction and removal of tracks, have the potential to shift the
experiential qualities inherent in the conservation estate.
This approach suggests that the walking tracks of the conservation estate, rather than its edges,
might be where the middle landscapes Geoff Park is looking for could be found. And might
the means by which this dialogue is negotiated be found in the manner of facilities provided
and the technology people use?
This poses a challenge to zone-based systems of organising outdoor regions which analyses
people’s perceptions according to spatially determined parameters. For example the
Recreation Opportunity Spectrum (ROS), developed by researchers in the United States (see
Hendee, Stankey and Lucas 1990:222-4) focuses on matching different bounded regions with
different activity types without exploring the diverse range of experiential dimensions that
take place in the same locale. Similarly Higham, Kearsley and Kliskey (2001) argue in their
maps of Kahurangi and Fiordland National Parks that the quantity of perceived wilderness is
spatially decreasing while similarly ignoring landscape’s perception-based experiential and
temporal qualities.
It could be argued that analysis, as provided by the ROS, might best be considered the starting
point to a subsequent and more detailed enquiry of the range of values and experiences that
can be found along a more active route or network of routes? The author has been mapping at
a finer grain, after undertaking video-based fieldwork, the narrative-based dimensions of a
number of Southern New Zealand walking tracks including the Routeburn, Kepler,
Humpridge, South Coast, Monowai and Dusky Tracks. What this work reveals is there
remains considerable potential to understand the role of facilities, wayfinding and
interpretation along such routes as a means to increase a user’s sense of involvement in, and
engagement with, the landscape.
For example mapping the Kepler Track according to its time-based attributes readily reveals
the Iris Burn section as a region that would benefit from more interpretative and interactive
content to diminish walker’s perception that this section is repetitive and boring. For what such
an approach especially directs is that a primary emphasis of the recreation planner is not to
demarcate zones and territories, but instead to ensure that the vectors along which people
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move is where the greatest emphasis on modelling user’s values and perceptions should take
place. And further that it is along the track that both negative qualities can be mitigated and
positive attributes enhanced.
3. Develop solutions that create kinesthetic and cognitive senses of participation in the
landscape.
Figure 21: Sections of track between Aspiring Hut and Shovel Flat
Figure 21 are two stills taken from video footage of two sections of the same the track that leads
from Aspiring Hut to Shovel Flat in the West Matukituki Valley. The track on the left was
recently cut by roading contractors to replace a track similar to that on the right. This, in turn,
is due for a similar upgrade in the coming year. What these images highlight are significant
differences in the experiences the tracks afford. By uniformly cropping the image around the
subject at regular time intervals, as in Figures 22 and 23, one can readily get a sense of the
different manner of involvement with their surrounding environment that each track generates
for the walker.
Figure 22: Series of stills showing subject walking newer track
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Figure 23: Series of stills showing subject walking older track
In the upgraded track to Shovel Flat (Figure 22) it can be argued that the person on the track,
while travelling through the forest, is only able to gain a visual appreciation of the indigenous
flora. It is difficult to assert that the track is part of the ecologically indigenous landscape
through which it travels. Instead the conservation estate, and in terms of content everything
meaningful, lies beyond the track. Indeed such paths appear to mimic the sense of
appreciation that is created by state of the art aquariums: where one travels along a transparent
corridor watching in wonder on an alien world on the other side of the glass.
There is also a further sense of abstraction. The manner of walking afforded by such a track
removes the possibility of a bodily knowing of the landscape’s form. Different topographies,
forests and geologies are watched but not kinaesthetically learnt. Where the land momentarily
dips the track, levelled so the digger might travel to cut the next section of path, doesn’t.
Where a spur abruptly turns the track, as it cuts deeper into the land, turns gradually. Instead
of leading the walker into the forest this form of track only leads them through it.
In the older track (Figure 23) a different type of engagement is prompted. In the process of
travelling both the track and the moving person weave more closely with the topography.
Both track and people shift from side to side as trees, rocks and landscape are negotiated. The
forest, rather than being located to the left and right of a track, envelopes. By looking closely at
the subject’s limbs one notes they are also kinaesthetically negotiating the forest. At different
moments arms and legs move in response to the form of the land as the entire body and all its
senses are engaged in the process of movement. Indeed it is more difficult to determine if the
track is separate to the landscape through which it travels, or whether it, and the person
walking it, are part of the landscape.
The anthropologist Tim Ingold considers such tasks, and the artifacts and environment in
which they are performed cannot readily be made distinct. All gain their substance from the
other. Hence when we watch people in their activities – for example the football player, the
cook, the guitarist, the child playing hide and seek, and a person walking certain types of forest
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tracks, the separation between person, movement, object and environment become less distinct.
In his model landscape is a time-driven living process formed by evolving and iterative
dialogues between an environment and its people. “It is through living in it that the landscape
becomes part of us, just as we are part of it” (2000:191). As a result meanings are both
cognitively and kinaesthetically ‘gathered from’ the landscape rather than merely observed. In
reviewing the two track-types to Shovel Flat one could ask which allows a deeper
understanding of the conservation estate to be drawn. Which type of track might better
facilitate a sense of ‘being actively involved’ in our ecologically indigenous landscapes?
Michel De Certeau (1984:91-110) makes considerable effort to explore the dimension of walking
as a spatial expression and making of place. It is in our footsteps that we can ‘weave places
together’. Hence, it is through practices like walking the land that the qualities of particular
landscapes are formed. Indeed different types of footfalls and rhythms of movement make the
form of a place different. This is the difficulty with the type of track upgrading as described in
Figure 22: by creating the same pattern of walking it makes different places the same. For
example it becomes hard to distinguish at an experiential level between walking the upgraded
West Matukituki and Rob Roy Glacier Track sections, the track to Routeburn Flats from the
carpark, the track from Harris Saddle to Conical Hill, and the South Coast Track before it splits
to Owaka Hut. While the surrounding topographies, forests and geology are different the
standard width, gradient and form homogenises difference. Such tracks, in the manner of a
museum exhibit, consider our ecologically indigenous landscapes as something to be
comprehended solely through what can be seen. As a result, and similar to the wilderness
photographs discussed before, the facilities by which the view is possible is imagined as
neither part of the image nor the conservation estate.
There is, however, one aspect that has been left out of this analysis. That is the older track to
Shovel Flat is of a standard not suited to the skills and fitness of people for whom these
upgraded tracks are provided. Indeed the reason for many track upgrades is to enable more
people to experience the conservation estate. For such people, whom the Department of
Conservation classes as Day Visitors (DV) and Backcountry Comfort Seekers (BCC) the
sustained presence of tree roots and large rock steps can make such routes unsafe and
unappealing.
It is to ensure consistency that the ‘Tracks and Outdoor Visitor Structures Standard’ was
developed. Outlined in tracks intended for DV and BCC users is a requirement to provide
‘even footing’ when walking. This is defined as “where the foot can be placed flat somewhere
on the track surface” (2004:10). These standards are a comprehensive approach in ensuring
consistent standards of access and safety are offered users. A number of other parameters
including minimum and maximum track widths, surface standards, gradients, step heights,
structure widths are also set. However, while each component includes a range of minimum
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and maximum parameters, in their application the minimum or maximum standard almost
invariably becomes the sole variable used. For example the images in Figure 24 are from
various boardwalks around the South Island. Their width is determined by the minimum
structure dimension of the relevant track category and generally remain unchanged for
boardwalks along each track. Likewise, whether one is walking in Hanmer Springs, Dunedin,
Fiordland or elsewhere, most longer sets of steps are built to the maximum permissible
dimensions: namely twenty steps with 300mm treads, 200mm risers, and a one metre landing
before the next set.
Figure 24: Selection of South Island boardwalks
The upgraded track to Shovel Flat clearly meets the standard. Yet because the standard doesn’t
attempt to address the experiential qualities that could also be provided when a track,
boardwalk or set of stairs is made, the potential of using such a facility to enhance a user’s
experience is not considered.
Figure 25: Sandfly Bay, Otago Peninsula
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In Figure 25 is an image of the recently installed fence at Sandfly Bay to accommodate extra
people to watch Hoiho (Yellow-eyed Penguin) come ashore when the adjacent viewing hide is
full. At one level what the image shows is that the structure does not allow for the needs of
younger people. However at a deeper level what it reveals is that the process by which it was
built, and the standards used in that process, did not provide the means by which the user’s
experiential needs were firstly identified and then secondly incorporated in a way that did not
compromise important safety and ecological values. Also what can perhaps be sensed in this
image, as too for many others in this paper, is that the consideration of experiential values
might not result in additional cost. The argument being pursued here is not that an experience
of ‘being involved’ must come at the expense of being safe. Rather both can be explicitly strived
for. As with Recommendation 1 there is a need to move beyond the current singular concern
with safety and basic functional aspects of facilities design. For while such attributes must
always be included so also must a more user-centred and design-led approach be incorporated
that is concerned with enhancing the relationship of people and place. Such an approach considers
the human experiential and perceptual aspects such as the temporal, narrative, kinaesthetic and
cognitive issues discussed. It also includes an acknowledgement of, and respect for, the
particularities of and differences between places that is similar to that given to the diversity
and distinctiveness of the indigenous flora and fauna the Department of Conservation strives
to protect and preserve.
And further what this highlights is a need to consider the significant financial investment in
visitor facilities in the conservation estate as an opportunity to increase in users their sense of
engagement and involvement in these stunning landscapes. Just prior to the Conserv-Vision
conference it was announced that $1m had been approved to improve facilities and
interpretation on the Routeburn Track. The growing level of investment in the conservation
estate, particularly in places which might become more accessible to a wider public, is exciting.
What this research highlights is that such an investment is not only an opportunity to provide
safer and more consistent facilities but also an opportunity to offer experientially rich
engagements of this country’s ecologically indigenous landscapes.
Conclusion
The foreword to the ‘Tracks and Outdoor Visitor Structures Standard’ notes the relevance of
track design to visitor experience. It states “tracks enable visitors to access and experience
natural areas and the design of a track should enhance this experience” (2004:7). However by
narrowly defining a track as “an access way on the ground, with or without overlaid surface”
(2004:13) and a boardwalk as “a pedestrian bridge with an effective fall height of not more that
3.0 m, and spans not greater than 2.5 m” (2004:10) it leaves unspoken and hence unaddressed
the potential of these facilities to enhance the user’s experience of natural areas. The
production of the ‘Interpretation Handbook and Standard: Distilling the Essence’ has brought
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together underlying principles along with examples of best practice in the area of
interpretation. It has been designed to work with other standards including corporate identity,
signs and publications (2005:105-6). I consider it timely to attempt the development of a similar
handbook to work alongside the ‘Tracks and Outdoor Visitor Structures Standard’. Such a
handbook could provide tools to evaluate on-site the experiential potential of existing and
proposed tracks and other structures, and also outline underlying principles with examples of
best practice at national and international levels.
Doreen Massey (2006) notes our understanding of landscape is always being negotiated.
Historically the conservation estate has been understood and engaged in multiple and often
contested ways. The added emphasis recently given by the Department of Conservation to
encouraging a sense of ‘being involved’ has implications not only in terms of public
participation in ecological restoration programmes and community initiatives. It also has
implications on how users of the conservation estate front-country and back-country are
provided for.
Firstly there is an opportunity to use facilities, including huts, bridges, tracks, and boardwalks,
to express a participatory relationship with our most ecologically indigenous landscapes.
Secondly there is potential to understand and model the values of people in the conservation
estate in terms of their temporal and narrative qualities. And thirdly solutions should be
developed that are not only safe but also create cognitive and kinaesthetic senses of ‘being
involved’ in the landscape.
For the challenge is to not only lead people through the conservation estate but also into it:
where people feel connected to this country’s indigenous landscapes and are motivated to
protect, enjoy and be involved.
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