Report from the June
DOC-NGO meeting.
By Max Wheatley
OK what is this
about?
Approximately
every 2 months, the Department of Conservation (DOC) holds a national meeting to face up to its Non Government
Organisations (NGO), most of which are recreational users like ourselves. These
meetings are held at DOC national head office in Wellington, so I attend these as the
nearest NZFWDA National Executive person and also in my role as National Public Relations Officer, one
of our 3 representatives who form part of CORANZ. www.coranz.org.nz That will be explained next
issue of “NZFWDA World”
Meetings are
held on the last Thursday afternoon of every other month, which of course
clashes with a club meeting and usually means I drive furiously home from Wellington, just in
time to step out the door again.
So who attends
these meetings?
This varies from
meeting to meeting depending on peoples commitments.
The meeting is
chaired and hosted by DOC, so the chairperson is usually a DOC department head
or unit manager, with a meeting secretary.
The list of other NGOs
represented looks something like this:
Fish & Game New Zealand
Tread Lightly!
CORANZ
ECO
National Council
of Women of New Zealand
Forest and Bird
Federated
Mountain Clubs
Mountain Bike
New Zealand
Jet Boat New Zealand.
New Zealand Deerstalkers.
There are bound
to be others that I have missed. So for most meetings there would be close to
20 people representing their organisations.
Format.
Most meetings
start with a presentation by either one of the member organisations or by DOC
on a topical issue, 1080, concessions, CMS etc.
The format of
the meeting is that NGO 's submit written questions to DOC that are formally
answered before the meeting and reported in writing to the meeting where
discussion may take place on the issues.
Last meeting.
I attended the
June meeting, but a number of others where absent. Some of the topics tabled
included:
- Consultation
with NGOs at conservancy level
FMC asked the
question if this format of meeting was being used at a local level. A number of
conservancies replied, but the general answer was “no”. Sometimes but most
often, these meetings were “needs” driven and not on a regular basis with the
local people.
-Walkways MOU.
DOC had signed the day
before, a MOU with the walkways access commission on how the DOC
walkways will be transferred. A copy of this document was handed to us for
reading and future discussion. This is an area of interest to us as it covers a
number of topics we should be watching such as paper roads, access to land,
maps etc.
- Consulting
NGOs on tracks.
Sometimes DOC
converts some tracks to shared use by people like mountain bikers. Of course I
added “ ….. and 4WD”. When this does happen it is done at a local level.
Several more questions
-What outcomes
and objectives are sought when these tracks usage is converted.
This then bought
up the subject of the NZ Standard DOC uses to build its tracks “Tracks and
Outdoor Visitor Structures – NZS HB 8360:2004”. I have done some thinking about
what we should offer to add to this document as in includes nothing for 4WD
tracks.
- Trail Books
and Workshops
MTBNZ tabled
that they have design books and run workshops on track building.
- Heli-Hunting
NZDA raised
safety concerns over this activity, the deteriorating of our clean and green
image and lack of control of this activity.
-
DOC funding.
The question was
asked about the effects of the cut on DOC funding. This was answered in a
presentation by Grant Baker on how these budget cuts where to be achieved at a
national level. Detail of how this will happen at conservancy level is not yet
clear.
-
Marginal Strips
There where
several questions relating to marginal strips, in Molesworth Station, Movable
marginal strips.
These are
interesting to us in that we use marginal strips to access rivers.
I generally post
the minutes of these meeting in the NZFWDA forum pages, but am more than happy
to forward them to you direct if you are interested.
Feel free to
contact me if you have any questions about this article or If you have a
question that you think should be tabled at this forum.
Max Wheatley
NPRO NZFWDA | 
