Feature
Sound and fury
by Peta Carey
Beautiful, isolated, romantic and … bursting at the seams. Milford Sound now faces the huge challenge of stopping tourism overload from ruining the view – without ruining the business.
For most New Zealanders, if we haven’t yet visited Milford Sound, it is there in our imagination. As with A&P shows and shearing gangs, or pohutukawa over a northern beach, it’s ours and one day we will get there.
One day we will trail behind the 50-odd coaches climbing the road to the Homer tunnel, wait in the queue for the loo at the waterfront or for packaged pies at the cafeteria; queue with the several hundred coached-in tourists waiting to board any one of the several boats – or rather ships -– that stagger their departure to trail out to the heads of the world-famous fiord and back again, while the seemingly incessant commentary from the ship’s PA system is drowned out by the drone of high-pitched single-engine aircraft queuing up on final approach to Milford Sound Airport.
And one day, just maybe, we will find that we cannot do any of that. The sign on the road on the outskirts of Te Anau will read: "Sorry, Milford Sound Full."
Closing the gate, or capping numbers, is just one – but certainly the most controversial – of several strategies proposed by the Department of Conservation in response to the mounting problems of overcrowding at Milford Sound. Over the next two years, the grand plan for sustainable development for one of our greatest tourism icons will be decided upon.
Around the table will sit all the statutory authorities (DOC for land, Environment Southland for water, Civil Aviation for airspace, Transit NZ for roading, and the list goes on), commercial operators, Ngai Tahu and local government. In the centre seat is DOC project manager Chris Eden, who has the task of brokering a way forward. No longer in khaki DOC uniform, he is now working from home, in an effort to appear impartial.
"Yes, I do feel a huge responsibility. There’s huge interest from government, industry and community. We’re being watched and we have to make it work. Potentially, this will be a model for the rest of New Zealand."
Although in the short term, Eden suggests, the problems are relatively easily resolved (toilets, road congestion, aircraft noise, etc), the long term presents the greatest challenge. Given another 10 to 20 years of tourism growth at current levels of over six percent increase a year, it’s not inconceivable to compare Milford Sound to its American counterparts – Yosemite or the Grand Canyon. Eden is careful not to jump to any conclusions. Any "capping" will be a last resort.
"Milford can’t continue to grow forever without some controls, and eventually on the number of people. There has to be a carrying capacity and the argument is what that carrying capacity is."
Milford Sound is the only place in Fiordland – World Heritage Status National Park – where the road travels all the way to the sea. Nowhere in the country do the pressures of tourism bite as deeply into environmental concerns, nowhere do the issues of overcrowding, noise pollution and traffic control have such an acute impact on the visitor’s experience.
"It’s a test case insofar as it’s a very visible measure of the numbers game," says Clive Geddes, Mayor of Queenstown and member of the newly formed Milford Governance Group. He sees Milford as an example of what may yet transpire on a nationwide basis.
"In Milford, what we’ve got captured is the New Zealand problem, about how many people you can continue to pump into a destination before you start to remove the attraction of that destination."
As background to this, the management of the entire Fiordland National Park is also up for review, with the park’s Draft Management Plan receiving over 2100 submissions – the greatest number ever received in response to a national park plan in New Zealand.
DOC submissions officer Marie Long says she is "overwhelmed" by the number. Such was the response that hearings, due to begin this month, have been delayed until October. As hunters argue the right to shoot wapiti, or white baiters to maintain 100-year-old fishing rituals, it’s often about traditional values or perceived "rights" going head to head with the realities of commercial pressure.
But the clamour may well be loudest over Milford Sound, the jewel in the crown of Fiordland. At issue here is not only what New Zealanders regard as their fundamental right – of freedom of entry to our national parks (written into law under the National Parks Act) – but also what we regard as the way our national parks should be. Of the vast number of submissions received on the subject of Milford, most are from New Zealanders who no longer have any inclination to visit, such is their dismay at the overcrowding.
"I think you’ve got to accept that Milford Sound is lost to tourism," says John Davies, whose company, Trojan Holdings, currently owns the guided walk concessions for the Milford, Routeburn and Greenstone tracks. He also owns the Hermitage at Mt Cook and what was the Milford Sound Hotel (today in a far less dignified state than the Tourist Hotel Corporation [THC] heydays of the 70s, the hotel is now unashamedly simply the fifth hut on the Milford Track).
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