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Issues affecting outdoor activities

• Where will you get your paper maps from?

• Skiing Web site

• Whirinaki track news

• DoC asks for my opinion

• Jim Sutton and the "Queen's Chain" etc.

• No more maps?

• Maps

• DoC vs Terralink

• Mangorewa Ecological area 

• Arahaki Lagoon

• Disclaimer

Read on:

The national mapping agency, a branch of Land Information New Zealand (LINZ), intends to discontinue the production of paper maps, such as the well known 260 series of topographical maps.

LINZ have a statutory responsibility to obtain and maintain a complete and comprehensive database of national topographical information, and to make it generally available to the public. However, with today’s digital technology, they do not see any obligation to actually produce old fashioned paper maps.

The national topographic database is a statutory responsibility of LINZ, and therefore it is funded by the taxpayer. The individual taxpayer is not considered here: the primary users are deemed to be the emergency and defense services, local bodies and business. All these, however, invariably maintain their own geospatial databases, and like the private sector, may use the parts of the LINZ database, but invariably need to add their own data. The recreational taxpayer is not represented or considered at all by LINZ.

As a stage towards divesting themselves of the responsibility for paper maps, LINZ have recently sought public input by an Internet based questionnaire.

LINZ’s questionnaire asks such things as, what maps and how many do you buy? It does not ask the important questions, which are, if we discontinue the production of a national series of paper maps, will that affect you? If it does, what will you do instead?

The interests of recreational users and others are not divergent where coverage by printed maps is a consideration. The difference is, the individual cannot afford the technology available to the professional user, which enables them to make a custom map.

Already, people are going into the field clutching palm pilots or even laptops, loaded with topographic data, and often because of the inadequacies of available paper maps. This is just for basic topographical information, because the old fashioned paper maps are not being updated well, if at all. The hunter or tramper of tomorrow might be carrying (besides their sleeping bag and rifle) a GPS receiver attached to a palm pilot! I am not joking- it is happening now with field staff employed by organizations such as DoC, Landcare, and their contractors. I am told that some of these people cannot even use a map and compass in the traditional way.

No wonder, if conventional maps are perceived to be a thing of the past.

What are the good, modern, alternatives? Downloading a "map" from the Internet and printing a usable map at home is not an option. A paper map that gives a good picture, an overview, that gives an appreciation of how everything relates in a geographically cohesive manner, means that the graphic must be large. The traditional "inch to a mile" map on a A0 size sheet has been proved to be durable and effective, so much so that it is almost a worldwide standard for detailed topographic depiction. Its production on a "one off" basis is completely beyond the recreational user, it is prohibitively expensive. Who will download it with a phone modem connection!

It is beyond anyone, including professional users. To print it requires a plotter- really expensive- and then it is not waterproof! Laminate it? More money- and then you are seriously thinking of going to fold it to fit in your pocket! Even printing a tiny A4 sheet with an inkjet is costly, and it is not waterproof either. Colour lasers are available- but all this is not really practicable, when compared with buying a paper map, already printed, with permanent ink on durable paper, complete with a legend and supporting information.

Note, a map is not a bit of one, but a complete graphic. Terralink, for example, do produce proper printed maps covering a number of popular recreational areas, but this does not constitute national coverage.

I think that the issue resolves into this: given the existence of a national digital topographic database, and suitable software to produce maps, is it going to be economic for a commercial provider to product maps "on demand"? that is, if you want a proper map, you place an order and it is printed and sent to you. By "economic" I mean that people will pay for it rather than make do with black and white photocopies of some blurred out-of-date rubbish. To have to do this would represent a degradation of what was once readily available- a loss of what we once effectively had- quality, nationwide coverage by large scale topographic maps.

Peter

August 2004

BUT an update in October 04. LINZ on their website state that Internet NZTopoOnLine is NOT a replacement for paper maps, and that they are exploring ways and means of managing the production of paper maps. No doubt that this is a result of the consultation I discussed above.

The Club have paid for their own Web site- www.rotoruatrampski.co.nz, evidently with the aim of promoting the Lodge commercially. I heard that the Committee wanted to see if I would make www.trampski.org a commercial, advertising site- I said, no, it is donated, and the way I want it.  I believe that the idea was also that it would work as an automated booking system for the Lodge and, even, tramping trips. I have some sympathy for the Ski booking Officer but....not so much.

To clear up any suggestion as to whether or not I refused to sell the Club the domain name trampski here is all the written (E-mail) communication that I have had with the committee:

 Darryl

McKellor has mentioned to me that the Club may like to have a more commercial face to the Web site.

  I started the web pages as an interest, and I am reasonably satisfied that they meet my objectives. The site also allows me to voice my opinions....if anyone is interested.

  I own the trampski.org name and the site uses  privately owned space on a web server for free. The .org domain is non-commercial. I think that making the present pages more commercially oriented would be inappropriate.

  I suggest that if the Club wishes to advertise it should buy trampski.com (or something like that) and get a professional job done. It should also pay to get links from other commercial recreation/tourist sites.

Peter

Darryl replied:

Thanks Peter for your input.

Darryl

That's all I know about the matter.

Good luck to www.rotoruatrampski.co.nz.  However, I will continue this web site, the one you are looking at, but only for as long as it interests me.

Recently, I have read the Whirinaki Circuit Track Development Plan. This sets out the DoC proposal for the track and hut network from Minginui (River Rd.) to the Okahu, including the Moerangi loop and Plateau sections. It makes interesting reading. In summary, the proposal involves:

• Upgrading 60.2 km of track (out of about 117 km total)
• building 54 new visitor structures, mainly bridges and boardwalks (as well as upgrading, or replacing the 100 existing ones)
• installing 31 new signs
• upgrading 2 carparks, adding road end shelters

Total (capital?) cost estimated as $1.186 million...plus $926 579.00 for track crew and programme manager...spread over 12 years....plus $66 800.00 per year for existing track maintenance. These costs exclude toilets and huts and maintenance of existing facilities.

Say $2 million from the pot for the track upgrade. This upgrades the track network to Back Country Comfort Seeker standard, which is the #3 out of 5 DoC formulaic track standards!

It is easy to see why DoC staff will support this proposal. From their point of view, it has the following advantages:

• It provides secure employment and a sense of direction for the future
• It provides something that they can be proud of and identify with
• It is conservative and low risk
• It looks good in planning targets and annual reports- follows the approved formula
• It brings money into the local economy.

Any suggestion that downgrades the proposal, maybe by accepting a lower track standard, and especially one which suggests that money "saved" this way can be spent on new basic facilities elsewhere, will have scant chance of success.

It is a "catch 22" situation. Management directly affects usage. DoC neglects a track and allows it to deteriorate, then uses the fact that people are not using it and will be put at risk if they do as an excuse to close it. The same argument may be turned around. They spend $2 million+ on a track, and then use the fact that it is popular with a high-profile class of user as justification.

Are the standards set for the Back Country Comfort Seeker too high? Do we need them? Do they really need that degree of comfort? DoC may need it-but do we need this development?

Peter

27 October 2003

In the last Budget DoC received an additional $349 million, spread over 10 years, and on top of their core funding, to be spent on fixing a perceived degrade in recreational facilities on the DoC "estate". To quote their Minister, this represented a doubling of the money available for to DoC for this purpose. DoC have now spent some of this on a public consultation process to ascertain if they are on the right track. I have followed this by reading the documents available on the DoC website, and by attending the public meeting at Rotorua on October 13 2003.

It was clear from the statements from the Minister and DoC officials, as published on the DoC site, that the funding would not be spent on any expansion of the programmed range of "recreational opportunities". To quote:

"The funding option chosen by the Government was to more effectively manage the present network of facilities..."

"The additional funding effectively doubles the DoC budget for maintaining huts, tracks, and other facilities...It also ensures that New Zealanders will have, for the foreseeable future, continued access to the present range of recreational opportunities on public conservation land..."

"It is likely that DoC can manage most but not all of the existing facilities- especially if some new facilities are to be provided."

I believe that DoC are saying;

• that the existing facilities for "recreational opportunities" (as defined by DoC prior to the Budget announcement) are adequate for now, but require additional funding to maintain them for the foreseeable future.

• that the additional funding is needed to maintain this position, and to enhance selected facilities to meet public expectations

• that those facilities not meeting planning targets must be removed to protect the DoC estate from untidiness

• that little new development of recreational facilities is needed and can be done only at the expense of reducing development of existing facilities.

• that this is in accordance with Government policy.

DoC have a statutory function to advise their Minister, and I find it had to believe that the Budget announcement was not influenced by self-serving advice from DoC.

The message passed at the public meeting was clear enough, and was well put by the DoC speaker, who said, in effect,  "the Lands and Survey got it right [more than twenty years ago!] and what they put in place will be right for today and for the future, providing that we get additional funding....this message was given to Government by DoC....".

As an example, facilities built twenty-five years ago with 100 users a year, today being used by thousands, and predicted to be used by ten thousand a year in ten year's time, will be OK with refurbishment, like a bigger hut, a better track, some more tarseal.

I do not agree with the overall mandate where planners in Wellington, or Rotorua, tell the Government what the public interest should be on what they are pleased to call "their" estate (or where they behave as though it were)- and then ask users if it's OK.

As an analogy, consider where the developing suburb of Eastside asks the City Council for recreational facilities in their area. The Council's response is, we have parks and playing fields and playgrounds over in Westside, been there for years and are popular, they will do you, but we will put some extra swings in. OK? The disgruntled citizens of Eastside say, but we don't want to send our kids over there, what about the reserves here in Eastside? They are overgrown with weeds, no-one wants to go there, we need them developed! No, says the Council, weeds are there and weeds will stay. You do not appreciate the planning targets set as long ago as 1987, and which we are asking you to endorse. Better do it.

Not good civic planning.

DoC planners will stoutly refuse to extend the preplanned recreational opportunities by the creation of new ones. It is an embedded attitude, and will be very difficult to change. The DoC advice to Government is reactionary, and is fundamentally flawed by its insistence on the endorsement of pre-existing DoC planning.

Peter [from Trampski mailing list October 2003- no response]. 

And I still wonder what happened to the additional funding (245 million dollars) that Sandra Lee announced DoC would receive for recreation in the 2001-2002 financial year!

Jim Sutton asks us to comment on his views of the "untidy" public access issue

On 24 September I attended a public meeting called by the Reference Group set up by Jim Sutton (Minister for Rural Affairs, not recreation) to study public access to waterways, the foreshore, but more specifically the so-called Queen's Chain, and so on. Its terms of reference were to review:

* access to the foreshore of the lakes and the sea and along rivers;

* access to public land across private land; and

* access onto private rural land to better facilitate public access to and enjoyment of New Zealand's natural environment.

By "access" they mean walking access only. This has serious implications for a hidden agenda, especially where legal road reserves exist.

Confusion about the objectives of the meeting abounded. Needless to say, it was dominated by the cries of those who were keen to have total control over use of their private land. "Red herrings" included the way in which DoC and Regional Councils were forcing landowners to do this and that, without compensation, vandalism and crime, legal minefields, Maori customary rights, etc. A good deal of time was spent explaining the complexity of land tenure issues. Access to public land for recreation got very little airing, although I had thought that this was what it was all about. One or two articulate speakers described the importance of walking access for public recreation, the difficulties too often encountered, and the need for an indigenous solution which would provide equivalent rights to the public as exist in the Old World. It is unfortunate that access across and to private land was so prominent in the Group's terms of reference; a political minefield, and I agree with comments that recreation would have been better served if it had been left out. As it was, the meeting got bogged down in partisan detail too often, a common feature of "public consultation".

As for me, the main interest was the Group's strong recommendation that Land Information NZ should provide free user-friendly public access to land tenure records, especially property boundaries. I have been advocating this for a number of years, mainly as depiction of the boundaries of public land on topographic maps.

People interested in this complex subject should look at www.publicaccessnewzealand.org. The Club has a paper copy of the Group's report.

Peter

September 2003

Most Club members are familiar with the national topographical maps which cover New Zealand on a scale of 2 cm to 1 km.

[Trampski mailing list 28/3/03  No-one replied.]

NZ Topo and recreational users

Land Information NZ (LINZ) is a Government agency charged (amongst other things) with the provision of a national geospatial service. The task of greatest significance to us is the provision of a fully digital national topographic database, called NZTopo. The best known output of this database are the paper maps referred to as the 260 topographical mapping series: the familiar 1:50 000 metric maps.

A fully digital database offers significant advantages to modern cartography. In particular, it allows the timely updating and revision of maps and the dissemination of this information without the costly and time-consuming methods of manual drafting. However, it appears to many users that the advantages of a digital database have not been fully realised, due probably to several factors, but predominently to the inadequacies of the topographical detail. No database is any better than the base input, and a study of NZTopo reveals many deficiencies from the point of view of the user.

Late in October 2000 I organised a meeting in Rotorua between LINZ representatives and interested parties from the Bay of Plenty. Present were people from SAR, District and Regional Councils, the forestry sector, DoC, map retailers, hunting and tramping clubs. The main topic of discussion was the performance of NZTopo, with particular reference to the following:

Reliability. A good deal of criticism was levelled at LINZ with regard to the accuracy and integrity of current map detail and the effectiveness of field checking and updating. Omissions, deliberate and otherwise and the partisan editing of detail were also discussed. It appeared that systems designed to provide accurate and thorough updating were not as effective as they should be. This is of critical importance to recreational and emergency users.

Reliability information. This information (date of photography and coverage, and field checking) has not been shown on topo maps for many years- not since the break-up of the old Lands and Survey Dept. The argument against showing this sort of information is that it is now irrelevant as updating is a continuous process. However, a careful study of recent maps suggests that this information is indeed relevant, and it appears that LINZ may revisit the decision to omit this reliability data.

Boundaries. No legal boundaries are shown on modern maps, although they have appeared from time to time in the past. The argument against depicting them is that they are not topographic in nature, and that much land including DoC estate is held or managed in a variety of tenures which would be confusing to depict. The meeting felt that the boundaries of certain lands of significant size and tenure, eg National and Forest Parks, should be shown.

Private roads. This topic occupied some time, as it is of particular importance in the Bay of Plenty where very large plantation forests exist. NZTopo shows only those roads named in the Authoritative Place and Street Names database. This database appears to be maintained for electoral and similar administrative purposes, and does not include the thousands of kilometers of named roads maintained by various forestry companies, for example. This was thought to be a serious deficiency for the map user. A similar situation exists where place names that have been in common local use for years are not shown if they are not sanctioned by the Geographic Board.

Another LINZ programme which was demonstrated and which may be relevant to the public was the provision of NZTopo on the Internet. The ability to freely download and use a seamless topographical map is attractive from the user's point of view, the more so as it is available as several layers, each representing a topographical theme. Thus, one can chose to have roads, or contours, or streams, etc. (Or even land boundaries.) Having experimented with the pilot site I feel that it has a long way to go. It is slow, the interface is not particularly user-friendly, the files are very large and print downloads are in PostScript form which many printers cannot use. Also, the main problem of computer graphics in the home or office environment remains; the resolution is poor and not remotely comparable with paper maps at a practical scale for most uses.

Other aspects of NZTopo and the paper maps were discussed. However, from the point of view of the recreational user the points above were the most relevant. My opinion, which was also supported at the meeting, was that NZTopo currently does not meet the requirements of users very well.

I personally feel that NZTopo is more than a purely topographical database; it is a general-purpose utility and a vital tool for emergency management as well as for a very wide range of other users. Indeed, that is for this reason that it is provided as a core government service. It would seem that LINZ may not have a good understanding of user requirements, despite the existence of a committee appointed specifically to advise them, and which includes representatives from the Defence Forces, DoC, MfE, Emergency Management, MAF, Police, Fire and Ambulance Services, and others. (Non-governmental and recreational organisations are conspicuously absent, though.) If the Rotorua meeting served no other purpose it helped to put a better user perspective to the LINZ representatives.

What is the way forward? One point that I hope was made strongly was that attention will have to be given to a more effective protocol to provide feedback from users, government departments such as DoC, territorial public bodies and private sector agencies to NZTopo. Users have for years been urged to provide detail corrections to the mapping agency, but we were told that few do this, let alone take the time to discuss their problems. There are obvious difficulties, especially with verification, but these could be solved. A topographic map must depict what is on the ground as far as possible, and in my mind there are no 'ifs or buts' about that.

Ultimately, improvements to NZTopo to align it better to users- if considered necessary- will need a political approach. LINZ is a Government department and NZTopo a publicly funded initiative, and policy influencing the implementation of NZTopo will follow funding directives from Government. Voices which will be heard in Wellington include organisations such as NZLSAR and the Police, Federated Mountain Clubs, Deerstalkers Association, and so on. LINZ have a good web site which is well worth exploring. There are copies of policy documents and standards which provide good background as to how NZTopo is being provided and why certain things happen. Are LINZ meeting their performance criteria for NZTopo?

Peter Dare

A Rumour

I heard through the grapevine that DoC have instructed their Visitor Centres to withdraw from sale all Terralink's Parkmaps, on the grounds that they contain serious errors. These are a new series produced by the privately owned company Terralink, formed from the sale of the old Department of  Survey and Land Information's commercial arm. Further, DoC have instructed its staff to withhold information from Terralink and its agents until the matter is resolved.

Do I detect some commercial rivalry here? After all, DoC did produce their own maps of many popular recreational areas, and may still be contemplating this. However, DoC's own maps are open to criticism on many grounds. More seriously, for years national topographical maps produced by or on behalf of Land Information New Zealand (LINZ) have contained serious errors and omissions, not only in recreational detail too, but DoC do not seem to have done  anything effective to correct those errors on the way its estate is depicted by a fellow department. Not in my experience. Why have they persisted through more than one edition? The national topographic database almost certainly was the source of the base data depicted by Terralink. I do not know where the errors troubling DoC came from though.

After all, you would expect that the agency responsible for about one third of New Zealand's land area would have some interest and clout in what topographic maps show. DoC are represented on a Wellington-based committee charged with overseeing Government produced spatial information of this kind, but it would appear that this committee has no practical effect outside the capital.

I notice that LINZ have published urgent corrections (on their Web site) to the Levin topo map, covering a significant part of the Tararuas.  Reading this reinforces my opinion that there is no regular practical communication between these government agencies. For example, DoC shift a hut by two km, and apparently tell no-one in the national mapping agency! How can someone sitting in front of a VDU in Wellington or Melbourne or wherever the map revision is done know? After all, the base map was produced from aerial photographs taken in 1985! And why did LINZ (or its contractors) not ask!

See the article above.

Peter Dare  Feb 03

More DoC knocking

Some time ago (2002) I sent the following E-mail to the DoC Lakes Field Centre. Haven't had a reply yet.....

and a year later, in October 2003, I walked the route again and nothing had been done. So I rang DoC Lakes Area office. And, DoC will try and do something soon, but yes, will appreciate any help from the Club- which I offered.

That seemed to have the desired effect! On 20 November DoC were beavering away clearing and marking the track. Also, removing any evidence of earlier efforts including the 35 year old original markers! I thought that they are part of our back country heritage.

Original E-mail:

ARAHAKI LAGOON

People will remember the article criticising the new track construction to the Arahaki Lagoon (Whirinaki) which appeared in last year's summer FMC Bulletin. Also the defensive reply from DoC at Rotorua. (Few might know though, the aggressive reaction from the local field centre staff...)