Maps for the People: The Mapping Issues of Walking Access in the New Zealand Outdoors

McDonald, P.

2005

Pete McDonald

The author’s: website and publications.

This paper analyses the mapping issues involved in walking access to the New Zealand countryside. It mostly covers old ground, collecting together what has already appeared – scattered around – in print. Readers who have followed the walking-access debate that has occurred since January 2003 will be familiar with much of what follows, except possibly some of the issues surrounding topographic maps.

A cautionary note on public roads. It is true that some of our unused public roads would provide logical walking routes. It is also possible that many others could be realigned or relocated, by negotiation, to follow sensible lines. So people, including me, have emphasised the need for cadastral information as a first stage in the putting to use of public roads. But a slavish total reliance on public roads can result in illogical and unsatisfactory track networks, fragmented and out of tune with the landscape. Public roads are not the be-all and end-all for walking access to the countryside. In some circumstances an amended Walkways Act, administered by the proposed access agency, could play a useful part in developing coherent and well-thought-out track systems.

For brevity I will refer to the report Walking Access in the New Zealand Outdoors as the Acland report. I will use the term ‘outdoor recreators’ to mean all the groups who have a need for and an interest in walking tracks: walkers, trampers, hunters, anglers, beach-goers, kayakers, etc. Some of these groups, such as hunters, also need general, go-anywhere access to designated areas of public land; hence the necessity for maps that depict the boundaries of public lands.

I will use the following abbreviations:

LINZ Land Information New Zealand

NTHA National Topographic/Hydrographic Authority

OCGI Officials’ Committee for Geospatial Information

MAF Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry

DOC Department of Conservation

I write as a walker and an advocate of networks of walking tracks across public and private rural land. In August 2005 Jim Sutton, the associate minister for rural affairs, announced the formation of a new Walking Access Consultation Panel. The panel ‘would engage in consultations to reach general agreement on what measures could be implemented to improve access to the publicly-owned resources of water and fish’.

At the time of writing, the work of the Consultation Panel remains in progress. There seems every likelihood that the panel will reach unanimous agreement on the mapping issues. 

Keywords:

Walk, Track, Trail, Map, Tramp, Outdoors, Mountain Bike, MTB, Safety, Cartography, National map series, Access

Visit/Download now

Evaluation

National

Outdoor Recreation

Outdoors

Coast and beach, Mountains, National Parks, Parks - remote/backcountry, Rivers and lakes, Travel and Transport

Barriers, Benefits, Capability, Participation, Planning

1300

July 11, 2012

July 11, 2012