Our National Parks FIORDLAND

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34041, 3 January 1976, Page 17

Our National Parks FIORDLAND

Easily the largest national park in New Zealand at 1.2 million hectares, Fiordland is also one of the largest in the southern hemisphere. In the south-west of the South Island the enormously long. indented coastline has a hinterland of rugged mountains and unbelievably steep-sided valleys carved out by the Pleistocene ice advances and invaded now in many places by the sea. In other places they are filled by freshwater lakes, some huge, like Te Anau and Manapouri, some tiny tarns. Forest froths over valleys and up the walls, even on places where it seems impossibly steep for trees to grow. In the north the mountains are high enough to support glaciers still — Mount Tutoko and its neighbours in the Da rans are heavily ice-clad giants in spite of being well under 3000 m high. Some spots in this extensive wilderness are wellknown and much-visited; the Tourist Hotel Corporation, for example, has hotels at Te Anau, and Milford. Accommodation is centred on Te Anau, a sizable township, and to a lesser extent on Manapourj. There are motor inns, hostels, motels, caravan parks, and camping grounds in both these places. Johnston’s hostel at Milford is for trampers and the “less sophisticated.” Cascade Lodge provides a place to stay along the road to Milford at the head of the Eglinton Valley; if you are camping in this valley there is a series of delightful sites along the road. Over the Divide cabin accommodation is available at Gunn’s camp in the lower Hollyford. For those walking the Milford or Routeburn tracks, or proceeding further down the Hollyford

Valley to Lake McKerrow, there" are huts along the way. The park board also has a hostel at Deep Cove, Doubtful Sound, available to school parties and other approved groups. Near Lake Monowai in the Borland Valley the Southland Youth Adventure Trust has set up Borland Lodge, in concept rather like Rotoiti Lodge in Nelson Lakes National Park. The lodge is used predominantly by secondary schools from Southland and beyond, and although field studies are a major part of the programme, increasing emphasis is being given to “adventure” experiences. Adventure there is in plenty for visitors to the remoter parts of Fiordland. Climbing centres on the Darran mountains and adjacent ranges in the north where the glaciated metamorphic rock is some of the soundest in the country. Besides the Milford and Routeburn tracks less well-known tramping routes go here and there. Red deer and the more restricted wapiti may be hunted by permit-holders; even moose were liberated in one area and are believed to be just holding on. Fiordland holds many surprises. Chamois are infiltrating southwards and are found now in the northern section of the park; pigs are numerous along the Waiau River and the south coast, while goats are restricted to the Milford track area. Unfortunately the oppossum is becoming common in parts of Fiordland. One extensive region in the Murchison mountains is set aside, with restricted access, for the conservation of takahe, a rare bird related to the pukeko and until the 1940 s thought to be extinct. An even rarer bird, a flightless parrot called kakapo', is making its last stand in the forests of Fiordland near Milford.

Further restricted areas near Mitre Peak have been set aside as part of the effort to save the species from extinction. Interest in Fiordland is heightened by two centuries of recorded history and remnants of the southern Maori traditions for centuries beyond that. Captain Cook met a group of Maoris in Dusky Sound on his second voyage; noone ever made contact with the people of that district again. Until the route opened up by the Milford Track was discovered in 1888, access to the fiords was exclusively by sea. Now that the road and tunnel gives access to Milford Sound, ships are superseded; an occasional tourist liner calls. Fishermen still work the' Fiordland coast, using the sounds for shelter, and many people enjoy the regular launch trips at Milford and the larger lakes. It is possible too to go on scenic flights across the park. From the air, especially if you have traversed parts of what you see on foot, the immensity of Fiordland becomes apparent. There are still parts of it which have never been seen from the ground. But it is not unlimited; it has to be cherished and looked after like the smaller parks; it is especially vulnerable to the threats of hydro-electric exploitation as the Manapouri project showed. Vast as Fiordland is, tough and resilient as its mountains, plants and wildlife may seem, it will be increasingly important to us simply as WILDERNESS, as a source of the sort of experience only wild nature can bestow on us, to refresh and inspire our weary urban spirits. (Specially written for us by Hugh Wilson, a botanist and honorary ranger of Mount Cook National Park).