Who runs New Zealand’s national parks?

Press, 7 December 1978, Page 15

Who runs New Zealand’s national parks?

By

JOHN WILSON

As New Zealand? ■ begin to think abou where to spend the long holidays, the attention of many will turn to a national park. In some parks they will find excellent facilities and services. In other parks, services and facilities are still inadequate. Some may be prompted further to wonder whose decisions determine whether a holiday in a park is pleasant, or even possible. As members of the public they will be likely to come" into contact with rangers in the park itself and, more rarely, officers of the Lands and Survey Department who have particular responsibilities for administering the parks.

But. these are not the people who make the important decisions about park planning and administration. The rangers in the parks are employed by national park boards — one for each park. Above the boards in turn is the National Parks Authority.

But the individual boards are the bodies which make most of the important decisions and determine how well, or poorly, as park is run. The board system for administering national parks became established before the 1952 National Parks Act. By that act, a system which had grown up for New Zealand’s first national parks (Tongariro. Egmont, Arthur’s Pass, and Abel Tasman) was extended to all national parks. The alternative was thought to be direct administration of the parks by a Government department. it was thought desirable, however, to give responsibility for running the parks to bodies of people drawn from the community rather than to bureaucrats who might become too detached from popular wishes and fellings, But Government departments were still given a weighty voice in the running of the parks. The local commissioners of Crown lands were named, ex officio, chairmen of the various boards, and officers of the Lands and Survey Department were appointed the perman e n t administrative officers of each park. Government departments were entrenched even more firmly on the National Parks Authority — six of the 11 members of the authority today are senior civil servants. But the boards were given wide enough powers to ensure that they did not become rubber stamps for departmental decisions. The boards meet, generally, monthly; they make all financial decisions about each park and have wi d e-reaching specific powers. The only real restraints on what park boards can do with the parks are the broad principles laid down in the National Parks Act and the general policies laid down by the authority. Who are they, then?

And how do they get to be members of a board? Most members of most boards are appointed by the Minister of Lands oh the recommendation of the National Parks Authority. The intention was clearly that the appointments should be made from all walks of life — the justification for the board system was that it would give the general public, and especially those who used the parks regularly, a say in how the parks were run. But this ideal has not always been attained. Some boards have, in the past, become as remote from the general public as any government officials could ever have become The members of the board are appointed under the act for terms of three years. The rub proved to be that they were eligible for re-appointment. With the same members being re-appointed for term after term, some boards tended to become closed and secretive in their decision-making. Members of the public interested in park planning and management were largely excluded from this decision-making. The Mount Cook board provides an illustration of this. The first board was appointed in 1955; there were odd changes in the board’s membership up until 1961. From that year until 1973, however, there was only one change in

the board’s membership (excluding the changes of chairmen which were the result of promotions within the Lands and Survey Department). The situation has improved markedly since 1973. In November of that year, two members of the board who had been first appointed in 1955, relinquished office. In 1978 two more resignations — of members who had served for 21 and 15 years — made further inroads into the “old guard.” Today the board has six members who have been appointed since 1970; three members still serving on the board, however, were appointed in 1957, 1959 and 1961. In the light of this record, the DirectorGeneral of Lands was hardly exaggerating when he admitted that the 'composition of boards has tended to remain the same.” This was. for years, a source of frustra tion to those who believed that clubby, older, male boards tended to make decisions which neither adequately preserved the park nor made it more readily accessible to many New Zealand holidaymakers. By the 19705, dissatisfaction with the way the board system was run mounted to the point that steps were taken to “open up” the administration of New Zealand’s national parks, but without sweeping the boards away. The National Parks Authority decided, rather, to invite the public to nominate board members. In 1977, the authority invited the public to offer nominations for seven national park boards. The response was remarkable, between 40 and 60 names coming forward for each board. Locally, nomin- j ations will be called for I the Arthur’s Pass board next year and for the Mount Cook board in 1980. The Authority has also declared publicly that it t wants the terms of board members limited prefera- ’ bly to two, with a maximum of three; wants no 1 board members to be over | 70 years of age: and wants at least one change in a board's membership at every triennial appointment of a new board. Other innovations should increase public par- 1 ticipation in national park administration. When the Public Bodies i Meetings Act was first passed, in 1962, the Gov- | ernment of the day re- ■ sisted adding national I park boards to the schedule of the act, which would have had the effect 1 of opening the board's regular meetings to members of the public and to the media. But a 1977 amendment to the Nat-

ional Parks Act added park boards to the schedule of the Public Bodies Meetings Act. The authority has also adopted a policy of requiring boards to invite submissions from the public on their management plans. The Mount Aspiring National Park Board ha* its management plan open for comment until December 22. This tinkering with the board system has not, however, been enough to satisfy some critics of how the parks have been run. The country’s corp* of national park ranger* has become a larger, more highly professional body than it was. There is a feeling in some quarters that the rangers, and the officers of the Lands and Survey Department who deal with park affairs, should be given greater responsibility. This feeling surfaced at the national parks conference held at Lincoln in the middle of the year. One senior ranger spoke of his frustration at seeing board members spend hours debating issue* which the parks’ professional managers could easily and should have resolved on the spot. Park boards will have to adjust to this feeling besides opening themselves outwards to bring the general public into the running of the parks. If the professional rangers and administrator* are to be given a greater say in running the country’s national parks, however, there is an even more pressing need for the boards to provide a popular check on a group which could become detached from the wishes and interests of the average New Zealander.