Weeks after the Conservation Department trumpeted a multi-million-dollar upgrade at the Ōpārara Basin, the Minister stepped in. David Williams reports
Conservation Minister Eugenie Sage intervened in a controversial upgrade at the Ōpārara Basin on the South Island’s West Coast last year, ordering a pause in all work except road safety and toilet upgrades.
But a review undertaken at Sage’s request hasn’t derailed the project, in the Kahurangi National Park. The Department of Conservation, which is managing the project, is pushing ahead, while environmental groups are calling for the new minister to stop work and order an external review.
The lion’s share of the work is being paid for by taxpayers through the Provincial Growth Fund, after a successful application by Tourism West Coast and the Ōpārara Valley Trust. Almost $6 million was set aside to develop the “strategic attraction”, including a road upgrade, track work, and several new structures, which are opposed by conservation groups.
Sage stepped in just weeks after DoC announced work would start in the Ōpārara, was revealed in Official Information Act documents released to Federated Mountain Clubs. The minister personally visited the site 10 days later and subsequently sent officials three pages of notes outlining her concerns.
She worried tracks were being brought up to “running shoe standard”, and the project’s objectives were unclear.
“The push to increase visitor numbers for economic development purposes, which was part of the project’s genesis and Development West Coast’s aim, appears to be leading to further site modifications to make it easy for as many visitors as possible; which creates cumulative impacts,” Sage wrote.
Her staff told DoC managers: “The international significance of the site and the high public interest in it means the Minister will continue to take a close interest in progress.”
Fate – in the form of the 2020 general election – intervened.
After Labour’s landslide victory, East Coast MP Kiri Allan was handed the conservation portfolio, and, outside of the upper Buller at least, the hubbub over the Ōpārara quieted. (Ayesha Verrall is caretaker minister, as Allan’s on leave from Parliament while she’s treated for cancer.)
DoC undertook its review in the background. Newsroom can reveal a decision paper, written by Western South Island operations director Mark Davies, seeking approval for the second stage of works, went to DoC deputy director-general of operations Mike Slater, on October 22 – just five days after the election.
The paper effectively dismisses Sage’s concerns by focusing on tourists’ safety and an “Exceptional Visitor Experience”, endorsing the proposed elevated walkway and a stairway to Moria Gate – subject to final design review and approval.
Slater, a former West Coast conservator, signed the paper on November 7, five days after Allan’s appointment. Sage was gone, and the project rumbled on.
Jan Finlayson, of Geraldine, president of recreation lobby group Federated Mountain Clubs, now calls the Ōpārara a “zombie project”.
“Zombies are incoherent, graceless, unthinking and refuse to die.” She adds, quickly, the project has refused to die “to date”.
In March, Finlayson wrote to Allan, seeking an external review of the project. FMC sits on an impotent “advisory group”, with conservation lobby Forest & Bird, and the Speleological Society. (Speleology is the scientific study, or exploration, of caves. The society is the national body for recreational cavers.)
The letter raises many concerns, particularly about the project’s legal footing, and claims of a switcheroo, in which initial conclusions the visual impact of proposed structures were intrusive have now changed to unintrusive. “We also have concerns about the location of the proposed suspended walkway as the plan is to bolt 100 metres of walkway along the base of a limestone cliff beneath an area of unstable rock.”
Finlayson tells Newsroom: “It doesn’t really matter much to what extent DoC tries to fix the project because it’s fundamentally wrong, and it would do the opposite of what the National Parks Act tells the department to do – instead of protecting nature it would cut it down, and trample it, domesticate it.”
DoC’s Ōpārara project manager Jess Curtis says the department is committed to protecting the geological and biodiversity values of the basin and enabling visitors to enjoy it safely. “One of DoC’s roles is to foster recreation and this requires protecting the places people visit.”
Stage two of the project includes the “low impact and sensitively designed elements”, Curtis says, which will provide a much-improved visitor experience and will “protect this special place”. DoC now refers to “in-ground natural limestone paving steps” down to the Moria Gate, rather than the originally proposed 7m-long, removable stairway – so perhaps complaints about what Sage called “site hardening” are having an effect.
(Concept designs are being finalised for a new boardwalk, elevated boardwalk, and new glulam bridge along the Ōpārara Arch track. Once signed off, DoC says they’ll be shared with the advisory group and conservation boards.)
Curtis adds: “Everything planned is consistent with the Kahurangi National Park Management Plan and the Tai Poutini West Coast Conservation Management Strategy.”
However, the DoC response is silent on Finlayson’s point the Ōpārara development’s inconsistent with the National Parks Act, which says parks should be preserved in perpetuity “for their intrinsic worth”, and preserved, as far as possible, in their natural state.
The organisation most directly responsible for funnelling tourists to the basin has been the Karamea-based Ōpārara Valley Trust.
Its deed of understanding with DoC, signed in 2003, says it will fundraise and develop visitor opportunities. To that end, it raised $3.2 million over six years to build 31km of tracks and associated infrastructure, like toilets. Estimates of annual visitors range from about 8000 to 15,000 people.
The trust’s chair, Rosalie Sampson, sits on the development project’s governance group, alongside DoC, the Business Ministry (overseeing the provincial growth fund investment), and Ngāti Waewae, a hapu of Ngāi Tahu.
Critics of the development are going off “half-charged”, Sampson says, calling them obsessed and wrong, and accusing them of wanting the area for themselves.
“It’s not going to get ruined, it’s being protected,” she says. “The only reason the Ōpārara Trust have pushed it is for protection of the environment and the people that are visiting the area … some of the track was getting unsafe; that is proposed to be corrected.”
Jo Birnie, Development West Coast’s economic development manager, says the Ōpārara project is an important part of a regional strategy to draw more visitors for longer stays to the northern West Coast.
“Visitation to the Ōpārara Basin is very important for the local economy, but it must be achieved in a way that retains and protects the environmental and cultural significance of the area, as well as being safe for the visitors themselves. This is why the infrastructure upgrades are incredibly important.”
Francois Tumahai, chairman of Te Rūnanga o Ngāti Waewae and a West Coast Tai Poutini Conservation Board member, was approached for comment.
Sage was most concerned with an elevated walkway, which she said would require significant vegetation clearance, and major engineering works to attach it to rock bluffs. This would create “an obvious and visually intrusive structure”, she said – something DoC’s recent planning advice disagrees with.
She also took issue with a staircase being installed down to the Moria Gate, which appears to have been scrapped.
The former minister still has doubts. She tells Newsroom it would be disappointing if the staircase into Moria Gate and the cantilevered walkway were built – they seem “an extravagance for a different sort of visitor experience”.
Despite several attempts over a week, Newsroom wasn’t able to get comment from acting minister Verrall.
Wonderland of karst and caves
The Ōpārara’s 16km-long access road was built in the 1960s and 1970s for logging trucks. Logging ceased in 1986. The idea to exploit the area for tourism is based on its unique geology, much of it beneath the surface.
The fragile basin boasts a 35-million-year-old complex of limestone caves, three impressive natural arches, and channels. It’s a wonderland of karst and caves, with caves taking colourful monickers like Crazy Paving and Box Canyon.
The Ōpārara’s 13km-long Honeycomb Hills caves, a specially protected area monitored by a security system, is of international scientific importance for its sub-fossil deposits. The basin is also known for its high biodiversity values – being home to whio/blue duck, listed as nationally vulnerable, the country’s biggest and only protected spider Spelungula cavernicola, as well as great spotted kiwi, and a rare moss, Epipterygium opararense.
There’s a natural tension between the basin’s rarity and fragility, including the danger of rockfalls, and using it as a tourism drawcard.
It’s not a binary, all-or-nothing argument. Forest and Bird’s Canterbury and West Coast regional manager Nicky Snoyink says she’s happy with stage one – installing new toilets and minor upgrades to the track. She accepts there are safety issues with the road, and the project has been dialled back from the gaudy original concepts.
Where she breaks with DoC and those backing increased tourism is over the basin’s sensitivity.
“It’s a really precious area,” says. “So one does have to wonder why it would ever be promoted as an iconic tourism site anyway, because of its specialness.”
Neil Silverwood is FMC’s vice president and a member of the West Coast Tai Poutini Conservation Board. (The Ōpārara’s location means the development’s being scrutinised by both the Nelson Marlborough and West Coast conservation boards.)
The photographer, writer, and cave specialist, who lives in Blackball, just north of Greymouth, is more strident than Snoyink.
“It’s no longer about protecting the Ōpārara, it’s largely about exploiting it,” he says. “This is fostering tourism and placing tourists’ needs before conservation and before recreation.” (That would be a reversal of what the Conservation Act requires.)
Silverwood thinks the development’s a giant overreaction: felling potentially “hundreds, if not thousands” of trees to widen a road when alternatives could be explored, and installing an elevated walkway when minor improvements would suffice.
For Speleological Society president John “Oz” Patterson, he believes increased tourism puts at risk the unique features and ecosystems of the Ōpārara. “If it was overseas, cave and karst would be given the importance and recognition it deserves.”
Doing DoC’s job
Sampson, the Ōpārara Valley Trust chair, says it wanted to fundraise for work to be done in the basin because DoC had other priorities, and the community in the upper Buller felt developing tracks and facilities for visitors was a high priority. “We’re at the tail end of nowhere but the area was becoming popular.”
The trust holds the sole DoC guiding concession for the Honeycomb Hill Caves.
She takes issue with Silverwood’s characterisation of the effects of the road widening, saying it’s a “minor upgrade”. “There might be the odd tree [cut down] but there’s not going to be heaps of trees.” On Patterson’s concerns, she says nothing specific is proposed for the caves themselves, which is protected with a sophisticated monitoring system.
Curtis, DoC’s project manager, says the initial project scope has been refined.
“Earlier conceptual work canvassed more significant changes, such as the idea of a raised walkway through the main arch. DoC rejected these ideas as they were considered inconsistent with maintaining the natural values of this special place.”
But DoC still finds itself managing a plan initially promoted by external organisations, including the trust, which was founded on the idea of increasing visitors to Karamea. The trust has raised more than $300,000 for the arch track upgrade.
Sampson, the chair, who received a gong in the 2009 Queen’s birthday honours list for services to conservation and community, laughs off the idea it’s strong-arming DoC. “We’ve got no leverage over the department.” If the trust had been managing the development, she says, “we would have done it sensitively, and it would have been done by now”.
She is clearly frustrated at the Ōpārara project delays. Her patience is wearing thin with the likes of FMC and Forest & Bird, even if those groups believe DoC is just going through the motions of consultation.
“To be quite honest, I would have said ‘get stuffed’ a long time ago to the steering group,” Sampson says. “Had they been reasonable people, asking relevant questions at a relevant time – bearing in mind that DoC is slow to act – I think things would be a lot different.”
FMC president Finlayson thinks there’s still time for an about-face by DoC. “They’re acting as though this project is an unstoppable force of nature. It’s not.”
However, it’s not as easy as just quitting the project and using the funds for conservation. The Business Ministry, MBIE, which oversees provincial growth fund spending and has signed a memorandum of understanding with project manager DoC, would no doubt frown upon money earmarked for one purpose being diverted to another.
Still, Finlayson says DoC, and the public, would be far better served to fund “more appropriate activities” in the northern Buller, adding: “They should commission an honest review of this case.”
For that to happen, however, the zombie project would finally need to die.
