"We condition the masses to hate the
country [wilderness], concluded the Director…..but simultaneously we
condition them to love all country [wilderness] sports. At the same
time we are to see to it that all country [wilderness] sports shall
entail the use of elaborate apparatus so that they consume manufactured
articles as well as transport"
Aldous Huxley (Brave New World 1932)
The 7 great
myths influencing DOC's Recreation Management (thinking)
Paper for the 2006 Recreation Summit by Rob Brown
Myth 1: There is no difference
between commercial and non-commercial recreation.
Explanation:
There is a difference between commercial and non-commercial forms of
recreation. Former NZCA member Craig Potton has described this
difference as being the difference the between 'expectation' and 'hope'.
In a non-commercial setting there is a high level of self-autonomy
and/or help from friends in which mystification and enchantment loom
large in a relatively uncontrolled context. By contrast most commercial
experiences place a high reliance on a professional and a recreational
product where the comfort and predictability of the package is almost
guaranteed. .
In a commercial setting, people are considered 'customers' purchasing a
'product' where service providers are expected to deliver a set of
outcomes at a fixed cost. The sorts of recreation that individuals or
clubs participate in are ones where there are far fewer expectations
and a successful outcome is more unpredictable and self-regulated. .
In a commercial setting, the expectation is that the service provider
will keep people safe, deliver them through their purchased experience
without harm to a successful conclusion. In a non-commercial setting,
we set off hoping that we ourselves make all the right choices and get
back unscathed.
Currently the department believes it is in the commercial business of
recreation and therefore its tendency is to over react to negative
feedback or situations (we don't want disappointed customers on our
hands, or worse injured customers). More than one of DOC's area
managers believe they are in the business of providing a set of
products for customers. This situation also means that society now
places an unrealistic 'expectation' on DOC that it will keep users safe
in the wilds. To a certain extent DOC has contributed to this societal
trend by over-reacting to how harsh the New Zealand back-country can be
from time to time [in its response to accidents and complaints].
Why is making a distinction between commercial and non-commercial
important? Perhaps the best explanation is from social philosopher Ivan
Illich who noted that: "Observations
of the sickening effect of programmed environments show that people in
them become indolent, impotent, narcissistic and apolitical. The
political process breaks down because people cease to be able to govern
themselves; they demand to be managed."
Too much commercial recreation in our wild places results in them being
artificially programmed.
The Reality
There is a world of difference, from both a management and an
individual user perspective, between commercial and non-commercial
recreation. While that difference has a lot to do with philosophy and
style, there are still major implications for society should
back-country recreation continue to be commercialised at its current
rate.
Society has seen this in urban sports where participation rates have
fallen when a sport is over-commercialised. New Zealand's main
recreational activities now fall into the passive rather than active
category (walking the length of the shopping mall does not really count
as active). SPARC has shifted the greater proportion of its funding to
the sponsorship of elite athletes so that we may have the pleasure of
watching them run fourth on television. Programmes encouraging
participation are few and far between and schools are finding it
increasingly difficult to find resources to run out of classroom
activities.
DOC sees commercial recreation as increasing participation in outdoor
recreation, without ever asking just what these ‘consumers’ are
participating in. There is no doubt that the purchasers of commercial
recreation products seriously believe they have pushed their own
boundaries and achieved something of significance. The reality is that
until they have taken that experience, used it to go out into the real
world and stand on their own two feet, make their own decisions where
they are responsible for their own safety, then they have just
purchased another commercial product and have barely stepped out of the
urban world.
Commercial products have the ability to totally dominate a recreational
setting. For example the Fox and Franz Valleys are now packaged as a
set of products, some purely visual, others involving activities. The
department itself tries to control the recreational experience with
signs and barriers and under an atmosphere that, in peak season, can
only be described as surveillance. The expectation is that most people
will enjoy these valleys using a private or public pre-packaged product
with the quiet enjoyment of the valley in a pure sense being relegated
to the fringe.
Un-restrained commercialisation of recreation is to some degree
unequitable because by its profit-motivated nature there will be a
significant proportion of the population never able to afford the
experience. An example of this is the Great Walks where the costs for a
family of four to walk, for example, the Milford are beyond the reach
of many New Zealand families.
The Way Forward
The philosophical difference between commercial and non-commercial
recreation has implications for all of us because it is a statement
about where we want to be as a society.
We need to be bold enough in society to minimise commercialism in wild
places and this may mean major areas of public land which are zoned as
being free of commercial activities. It is philosophically no different
from leaving old growth forest standing tall for the birds because we
don't really need to cut it down. Commercialising recreation has a cost
to society – it is just not as obvious as a clear-cut forest.
Public land managers need to be free from the commercial pressures of
'meeting market expectations' and instead focus on providing a setting
where the people can either take or leave the experience provided. This
could involve a major shift in society thinking about the way 'duty of
care' is applied by managers of wild lands which would be
philosophically quite different from managers of urban or rural areas.
Managing recreation in wild places should involve people taking up the
challenges on a 'nature on nature's terms' basis..
Myth 2: There is such a human being
as a 'Back Country Comfort Seeker'.
Explanation:
In fact these mythical persons only exist in the minds of DOC planners
and are an artificial construct to drive the standards of huts and
tracks that DOC provide.
This has come about because DOC took a system (the Recreational
Opportunity Spectrum or ROS) that worked in that it was centred around
describing a range of opportunities, and then decided to overlay an
invention of its own with the Visitor Groups. These groups were a total
invention that had little basis ins reality.
There is evidence that DOC itself is confused about these Visitor
Groups and recognises criticism of them. Below is the very muddled
explanation directly from the DOC website (How Does DOC Analyse
Recreation Opportunities?):
It is well accepted that there is a
great variety of visitors in terms of such characteristics as
demographics and interests. It is more complicated to get agreement
about how to divide visitors up into groups with similar
characteristics to inform management decisions on appropriate facility
types and standards.
People are assumed to belong to a
particular Visitor Group when they visit conservation areas. The
Visitor Strategy explains the origin of Visitor Groups based on the
range of Recreation Opportunity Class settings, and the typical visitor
profiles of those people preferring to use the different ROS Classes.
People may belong to different groups at different times, and the group
will tend to choose a facility that suits the least able or least
adventurous of the group they are with, or they take steps to enable
everyone to participate to the same level. As with any type of ‘market
segmentation’ the groups are simplifications of the real world, and as
such may not be accepted by everyone. Of particular note is that the
difference between SST and DV may be hard to determine other than the
length of time that people actually spend at a location.
As a tool managing recreation on public wild lands, this has been
problematic. It generates a totally artificial approach based on what
planners think their 'market' wants at each location.
These artificial Visitor Groups drive standards and are used by
managers when they employ contractors to do the work (it is no
co-incidence that the front country track width standard is precisely
the width of the motorised diggers used to make those tracks). No
person exists that considers themselves a back-country comfort seeker,
demanding a 1 to 1.5 metre gravelled track no steeper than X degrees.
The Reality
Individuals who recreate on public lands cannot be put into convenient
boxes in terms of what they seek from an experience in the wild.
Individuals move through a variety of experiences in their lives from
the early easy school tramp, to perhaps more challenging trips in their
20's, to perhaps easier trips when they have children. Further, they
seek a variety of experiences where there is a consistent set of values
grounding each experience.
DOC's current obsession with applying precise standards to track work,
often takes little account of the experience, history of use, location
and does not fulfil the vision of managing places in a way that fosters
self-reliance.
In many cases, DOC's short walks are becoming so manicured that they
are of a higher standard than a local recreational park like the Port
Hills of Christchurch where many people day walk on relatively rough
tracks.
The Way Forward
The Visitor Groups are essentially a commercial model not a recreation
model. They are seriously flawed and add nothing in terms of managing
recreational opportunities.
DOC needs to ditch the Visitor Groups and get back to thinking about
the basics of the ROS spectrum that focused on types of experiences at
different places and the values associated with these places.
What individuals are looking for as they take up these opportunities is
management firmly grounded in a core set of values across ALL wild
lands and not simply experiences that change to suit a percieved
'market' trend.
Myth 3: 'Hard core' back country
users only ever go to hard places.
Explanation:
This is perhaps the biggest myth driving the department's thinking in
the past 10 years because it is pure fantasy. The implied myth is that
these same people virtually never appreciate and never go to any of the
'easy' places.
When the department says: "Mountain Biking is more popular now" or
"There are more people doing easier walks" it says this in a vacuum of
knowledge about where this increasing popularity is coming from. There
is plenty of evidence that tramping clubs are running more biking trips
than ever and plenty of evidence that many outdoor recreationalists,
some of whom the department unofficially labels 'hard-core', are
participating in a wider variety of activities than ever.
Running through the department is an undercurrent that this [perceived]
group of users is far too few in number and yet far too vocal in their
arguments for the back-country. And yet when DOC did some basic
research before the Hut and Track ROR review it found that nearly 10
percent of the population has spent a night in a back country hut
within the last few months indicating high numbers of Kiwis out
hunting, fishing, tramping, biking and mountaineering in these places
(part of the arguementargument for the 2002 Recreational Funding
Budget).
The Reality
It would be more accurate to refer to these people as intensive and
regular users (of recreational opportunities) of public land as they
tend to be there at least once a month and using all manner of
facilities from short walks to camp grounds to the classic back-country
hut. .
Like everyone else, these users go through a life cycle in the
outdoors, and take on different experiences depending on whether they
are going into wild places with their children, their parents or their
friends.
They are vocal because they passionately believe that in a world of
change, wild places offer something solid and enduring to pass onto the
next generation which is full of value and meaning. This group argues
so strongly for the back-country because it sees the value in DOC
staying focused on providing opportunities that span the full spectrum
from front country to back country to wilderness. This means DOC has to
be equally committed to both front-country (usually intensive use)
areas and back-country (usually but not always moderate use).
The Way Forward
DOC needs to stop pigeon-holing users into convenient boxes as a
management technique. The use pattern is too complex for this and the
boxes don't assist the thinking in any real way.
DOC does not need to try and second-guess the mind of users or their
motivation but instead to stay focused on the core experiences –
walking, natural quiet, the challenge of ancient nature, solitude, the
cultural significance of returning our wilderness roots – that make
public conservation land special and provide the sort of experiences
not found elsewhere.
Myth 4: Maintaining the back-country
is expensive (and benefits few).
Explanation:
There is still a simmering undercurrent, perhaps even the purpose
behind this conference, that many of the back-country assets are too
expensive to retain in the long term and are only used by a few anyway.
Despite the Hut and Track review, there is still a persistent feeling
within DOC that the hut issue is simply to big for the country in the
long term and apart from a few huts here and there, there are no real
heritage issues at stake.
When Sandra Lee gained the new funding for the department in the early
part of this decade it was intended to be $349 million over 10 years
(2002-2012). This was being ramped up over the term, however there has
still been many millions in new funding for DOC. The best estimate is
that only a proportion of this new funding has been spent on hut
replacements (around 30 new huts at an approximate average cost of
$300,000 each).
So where is the rest of the money going?
By far the bulk of the new DOC new recreation money is currently being
spent on new carparks at 'hot spots', upgraded toilets, upgraded short
walks, road maintenance. The back-country has received a share but it
is still a proportionally a small share given how capital-intensive the
projects are in the major tourist hot spots.
Just one small example is the upgrade of the Knights Point carpark on
the West Coast. This will involve stormwater control, new fencing, some
plantings and is forecast to cost $185,000. It is unlikely this upgrade
would last as long as the forecast 50-year life of a new hut. Unlike a
new hut there will be no recovery of the expense.
There are many more projects like this on the West Coast: $200,000 to
the Oparara Trust for upgrading the arch tracks; $250,000 for upgrading
the Pororari-Punakaiki River Walk, $250,000 for upgrading the Cape
Foulwind carpark.
This is happening right around the country.
The Reality
While the new money undoubtedly 'saved' the back-country system from
withering on the recreation vine (it was sorely under-resourced
previously), in effect, the Recreational Facilities Funding of 2002 is
still a massive subsidy to the large business of commercial tourism
(albeit with some flow on benefits for New Zealanders).
Maintaining the back-country is a small part of the equation and is
relatively cheap by comparison. The reality is many of the 950 odd huts
are in reasonable condition and with a proper maintenance programme
could be passed onto future generations with their value intact.
There is no evidence that the use on any hut is declining, in fact
quite the opposite. Even the most remote sites on the West Coast have
greater and increasing use and this jumped markedly once the network
received some maintenance in the past five years.
People obviously see the value..
DoC gives every indication that it is worried only 30 huts have been
replaced with this finding and is still fretting about the replacement
of the others into the future and the size of the hut inventory as a
whole.
And yet the money was supposed to be mainly for huts and tracks; it was
supposed to deal with this issue.
From the Budget Announcement 2002:
Implications of the budget
announcement
The governments announcement
establishes a new increased funding base and sets parameters within
which the department and community can work together to more
effectively manage New Zealand's hut and track network into the
foreseeable future. Provision for depreciation ensures that
recreational facilities can be replaced in future.
The entire document was focused around the hut and track network and
yet the expenditure on the front-country has turned this funding into a
huge subsidy for tourism.
The Way Forward
I believe DOC needs to be more efficient and careful about it's front
country upgrades. Currently virtually every upgraded track is gold
plated. Instead it should use the money for maintenance rather than
expensive upgrades Generally it is far cheaper to repair old buildings
than build new ones.
It needs to stop simply building larger carparks and larger huts just
because things get busy for a couple of months of the year (most of the
large new carparks will be empty for much of the year – during the
tourist off season) and get away from the corporate image that insists
on seeing nicely polished DoC signs and billboards everywhere. It
should not be providing what are almost back-packer lodges at some
back-country locations and adopt a 'fit for purpose' approach to
facility replacement.
DOC needs to stay committed to the motley old collection of huts it
inherited as part of our national identity and if it is really worried
about how the costs of the modern building code applies to the
maintenance of these structures then it needs to work with government
to develop a back-country building code that preserves their heritage.
Myth 5: There is no implied
hierarchy in the Conservation Act that the department will 'foster
recreation and allow tourism'.
Explanation:
The authors of the Conservation Act intended DOC to make a clear
distinction between ‘fostering recreation’ and ‘allowing tourism’ .
They carefully choose words to make it clear what the priorities should
be. ‘Foster’ lies above ‘allow’ in the hierarchy.
DOC struggled with this issue in the recent construction of the General
Policy for the Conservation Act and eventually tossed it in the too
hard basket. There were simply too many tourism operators that would
have been offended had clarity been added to the Conservation Act.
How does DOC give effect to the words in the legislation? Does it just
need to do the basic job of providing facilities to 'foster'
recreation? Or should it be more proactive? And while the legislation
says 'allow' tourism, how much should it allow? – Some? A little? A lot?
Should not giving effect to the legislation be a question of where DOC
puts its priorities and the bulk of the resources?
And what role should rangers play in 'fostering' recreation? There was
once a time when they seriously carried out this role and now they are
hardly to be seen. We see DOC people out working on biodiversity, the
odd person out working on tracks, plenty of people driving around in
vehicles, but where are the rangers?
There was once a time when DOC really was out there interacting with
the public, fostering recreation, simply by ensuring it had a presence
in the field. Some conservancies run good summer, school or
conservation week programmes where for a limited time rangers are to be
seen out 'ranging'. Other conservancies do not. There seems to be no
consistency.
It still has an average set of Visitor Centres which on the whole
provide reasonable information as ways of fostering recreation, when
they are staffed by someone with good local knowledge (staffing is
patchy) and when they are open.
The Reality
DOC has now become so confused by this part of the legislation that it
seriously believes that allowing tourism is actually fostering
recreation. Even though DOC funding has gone up markedly in the past 10
years, it has wound back a lot of its traditional programmes that
fostered recreation, preferring instead to let the private sector pick
up these roles. This is now the conventional thinking in the department
and they make decisions accordingly.
The reality today is that in parts of the country, there are more
people processing and monitoring tourism concessions than there are out
behaving like traditional rangers and inter-acting with the public who
are choosing to recreate without the need to purchase a product. The
West Coast Conservancy has bigger teams of people inside processing
concessions or monitoring some type of commercial activity than there
are out cutting tracks and looking after huts, or running summer
programmes (the last in particular now seen as quaint stuff of another
era).
There seems no clear strategic direction to ensure DOoC has the bulk of
its employees out in the field.
But there is within government and the department a slightly covert
strategic direction to ensure that concessions – particularly tourism
concessions – jumps the cue for resources. This is because the
department now raises fully 10 percent of its operating budget from
concessions revenue. But at what cost? Certainly the department
recovers some of this monetary cost but the main cost is in distracting
it from higher priorities.
The Way Forward
The crux of giving effect to the legislation is to ensure that in
allowing tourism, DOC achieves its first two responsibilities of
conservation first and the maintenance of recreation facilities second.
There is disquiet within the department about the level of funding for
recreation, but this has more to do with the government's current
under-funding of DOC's biodiversity programme (DOC as a whole,
throughout the whole country has a smaller budget than the Christchurch
City Council).
The second way of giving effect to the legislation is to put more
weight on submissions from non-commercial organizations during the
planning process for our public lands. Currently the submissions of
some commercial operators are given undue weight and this distorts the
process because of their vested interest. In short, tourism should only
be 'allowed' once the public process has set the regime for a place.
Thirdly, DoC needs a greater field presence with a return to the days
of real rangers. DOC needs to ensure that the perception of the public
is that it is, at heart, an organisation that works in the field. This
currently is not the case.
Myth 6: Questioning people on
location is a useful way of determining what people think of a certain
recreational experience.
Explanation:
Feeding in to DOC’s management of recreation is its basic research at
certain sites.
In the past 15 years DOC has (unwittingly or not) diluted the voice of
New Zealanders by using this technique.
An examples of this is monitoring the impact of aircraft noise on the
experience of users of wild places. At a place like Franz Josef, for
years DOC has asked people visiting the glaciers whether they are
experiencing any level of dissatisfaction with the noise in the valley.
For years the results have hovered below the arbitrary 25 percent
dissatisfaction limit.
The Reality
The third day of the Milford Track over the pass is still pretty much a
tramping track in the traditional sense. It has been this way for over
80 years and there is the odd 80 year old who still goes over the pass.
Most people who do the Milford actually find it surprisingly hard and
if you were to interview people at Dumpling Hut they would probably say
just that, maybe even that it was too hard. But ask them a few days
latter, after the aches and pains have ebbed away and the warm glow of
achievement has set in and they would probably say that it was just at
the right level.
The moral of the story is that questioning people on location is a
crumby way of doing recreation research, particularly when the
participant is tired, hungry and from a country not used to the sort of
landscape we have in New Zealand.
The Way Forward
DOC needs to consider any form of research in a way that most people
use customer research: with a grain of salt and barely worth the paper
it is written on.
Most successful organizations will tell you that it is almost
impossible to second guess what people want and where trends are
heading and that nothing beats working from a grounded and secure set
of values where everyone is clear on what the objectives are.
DOC needs to be more grounded in New Zealand's historical recreational
roots and working from a consistent set of values rather than trying to
second guess trends or deliver what it thinks people want.
Myth 7: Each generation is becoming
more pathetic than the last.
Explanation:
Darwin may have believed in evolution, many managers in DOC covertly
believe in devolution.
DOC believes that society is becoming softer and softer and that it has
no option but to go with the flow and manage places in a way that
accounts for this (i.e building easier and easier tracks, bigger and
better huts). Others believe that we need to guard against devolution
with the most powerful tool we have: our wild places. The department
accuses the others of asking it to engage in a form of social
engineering, to which the others reply: Guilty.
There is nothing at all wrong with managing wild places in a way that
is hard nosed enough to shape the human spirit. So why is DOC, and
governments, so willing to 'go with the devolutionary flow'?.
The Reality
People still have two arms and two legs, and we hope a functional
brain. People were trudging through the New Zealand's mountains 100
years ago with terrible gear and long skirts or tweed overcoats. Things
are significantly better with gear and tracks today and yet despite
this we are overly obsessed with making the wild safe and comfortable.
The Way Forward
DOC should not treat users as small children. We should not obliterate
the wild in our wilderness by arriving with all our urban expectations
for comfort and safety and expecting it to be a tightly controlled
environment.
To keep persisting with the policy of providing for softer and softer
wants in the back-country is to destroy the very reasons why people
recreate in these places.
"If the preservationist does not
succeed in reducing the taste for such [consumer] activities, he will
have fundamentally failed. His goal is to encourage the public
increasingly to internalise its capacity to wring satisfaction out of
experience – not merely for the brief moments spent in the parks, but
in the attitudes carried away from them as well. In this respect
recreation policy fundamentally reinforces the symbolic value that
parks embody for the preservationist. As symbols of restraint, and
human limits, their message is inevitably undermined unless they affect
the attitudes we bring to the use of our leisure time.
Indeed, the issue is not simply
reducing conflict between opportunities for different kinds of
recreation. It is unlikely that we could fill the exploding demand for
power-based [consumer] recreation even if that were our first priority.
Recreation that is dependant on ever-increasing growth and impact for
its satisfaction is insatiable. The scarcity of resources we encounter
in trying to meet such recreational demand is as much psychological as
a physical problem. No matter how much land we have, more will always
be demanded because the object is itself more, more of whatever there
is.
This, perhaps, is another way of
asserting that the will to power[to consume] is ultimately
self-defeating, and the preservationists' moralistic stance may be a
practical solution, even for those who can only see the problem as one
of perpetually insufficient resources.
The parks themselves, however they
are used, will never constitute more than a small fraction of all our
recreational resources. And ideal forms of recreation will never
account for more than a tiny fraction of anyone's leisure activity. But
the underlying idea – substituting intensiveness of experience for
intensiveness of consumption – can radiate out into a much wider area
of both private and public recreation and can speak broadly to the
problems of scarcity and conflict that we see everywhere."
Joseph Sax Mountains Without
Handrails: Reflections on the National Parks.
Council of Outdoor Recreation Associations of New Zealand,
(Inc.) Dated: October 2006