2.1 ARQUITECTURA DEL TABLERO DE TRANSFERENCIA AUTOMÁTICA
2.2.1 ENTRADAS DEL SISTEMA DE TRANSFERENCIA AUTOMÁTICA
Within the conservation estate wilderness is specifically used to define certain remote tracts of land so appropriate management strategies might protect values of solitude and remoteness. At the 1981 Federated Mountain Clubs Conference, a diverse group of stakeholders40 met to debate ‘wilderness
recreation in New Zealand’. In discussing proposals to gazette ten specific areas as ‘wilderness’ the following criteria for inclusion were set: “large enough to take at least two day’s foot travel to traverse; they should have
40 This included representatives from New Zealand Government ministries, other centrally funded agencies, regional government, territorial agencies and recreation organisations. For the full list of attendees see: Molloy and Federated Mountain Clubs of New Zealand., 1983, Wilderness recreation in New Zealand : proceedings of the FMC 50th Jubilee Conference on Wilderness, Rotoiti Lodge, Nelson Lakes National Park, 22-24 August, 1981, p139-140.
clearly defined topographical boundaries and be adequately buffered so as to be unaffected except in minor ways, by human influences; [and] they will not have developments such as huts, tracks, bridges, signs, nor mechanised access.”41
Using these criteria, along with an assessment of its fit to the relevant region’s Conservation Management strategy eleven areas have to date been formally classified.42 Together these make up over 6% of the conservation estate.43
Such areas are set aside as places without from tourism, commercial recreation and mechanised modes of access. Instead they are intended as a site for people to get away from it all – to seek and find “remoteness and discovery, challenge, solitude, freedom and romance.”44 In other words to be
places – as mountaineer and former Department of Conservation Conservator-General Hugh Logan describing the Okuru Wilderness Area states – where one can meet “nature on its own terms, with every visitor able to experience the uncertainty, the challenge and the reward of wilderness.”45
Yet there is no guarantee that an experience of wilderness will be gained there. A number of other factors including the proximity of other parties, the size and activities of those parties, the occurrence of overflights, and also respective modes of access and travel can all impact on a person’s sense of wilderness.
A review of the various publications of the New Zealand Deerstalkers Association, Federated Mountain Clubs, New Zealand Alpine Club, Forest and Bird, and tourism based NGOs suggests a diversity of definitions and experience that might constitute wilderness. Hence a wilderness ethos of trampers, who seeking to ‘take only photographs and leave only footprints’ runs counter to that of many hunters who, in the same location find wilderness by attempting to find their food from the land. As Geoff Kearsley notes wilderness is a site for an individual’s “personal cognition, emotion,
41 Ibid, p137. The complete Wilderness Policy is described in full on pages 136-138.
42 These are Raukumara, Rakituri, Te Tatau Pounamu, and Hauhungatahi Wilderness Areas in the North Island, and Tasman, Paparoa, Adams, Hooker/Landsborough, Olivine, Pembroke and Glaisnock Wilderness Areas in the South Island. South West/Cameron and Pegasus Tin Range Wilderness areas (in Fiordland and Stewart Island respectively) are currently proposed in National Park Mangement Plans. Molloy, Potton, Morris and Martin, 2007, New Zealand's wilderness heritage, p 28-35.
43 Approximately 520,000 ha of the 8.15m ha of the New Zealand conservation estate. Ibid, p 28-35.
44 Molloy and Federated Mountain Clubs of New Zealand., 1983, Wilderness recreation in New Zealand : proceedings of the FMC 50th Jubilee Conference on Wilderness, Rotoiti Lodge, Nelson Lakes National Park, 22-24 August, 1981, p136.
values and experiences to construct concepts of wilderness with which others may vehemently disagree”.46
Nor is wilderness exclusive to the register of geographically defined and similarly assessed blocks that the Department of Conservation designates as wilderness. If guides books, websites, blogs, and hut book entries are considered, a sense of wilderness pervades the wider conservation estate and not just those zones the Department of Conservation’s designations would indicate.
Even demarcating specific areas like the Okuru as wilderness could be ‘contrary to the concept’.47 This is because constraining wilderness to physical
sites with known borders can be considered to make such locations less wild. As Raymond Dasmann states: “sometimes I wonder if our final act of wilderness destruction did not lie in designating formal wilderness areas for preservation. In defining the boundaries, writing the rules and publicising the results, did we not remove the last magic and make us realise that the remote and unknown was available to all.”48
For wilderness is not an innate quality of a land ‘out-there’. Instead wilderness is a culturally located idea that is used by people as a mechanism to conceptualise many types of places and continues to be vigorously applied to the conservation estate.
In 2001 geographer John Shultis sought through a mail survey to assess attitudes and understandings of both the popular and political conceptions of wilderness across a representative group of New Zealanders. His work found that while New Zealanders agreed with the Department of Conservation that mining, forestry and energy developments were undesirable in wilderness regions it also found support for huts, tracks, bridges, direct road access and commercial recreation – all of which are unacceptable according to the current Department of Conservation criteria for wilderness regions. Such results confirm that for many an experience of wilderness is possible across almost all of the conservation estate.
46 Kearsley and University of Otago., 1997, Wilderness tourism : a new rush to destruction? p14.
47 See Molloy and Federated Mountain Clubs of New Zealand., 1983, Wilderness recreation in New Zealand : proceedings of the FMC 50th Jubilee Conference on Wilderness, Rotoiti Lodge, Nelson Lakes National Park, 22-24 August, 1981, p134.
48 Cited in Ibid, p16. For further research in this vein see also Loomis, 1999, Do Additional Designations of Wilderness Result in Increases in Recreation Use?
In many ways the most notable result of the survey, though left unremarked by Shultis, was the high rate of people able to define wilderness even though they had never experienced a wilderness region as defined by the Department of Conservation. Specifically 78% of respondents confirmed that they had had no direct experience of wilderness, yet only 5% of respondents were unable to complete a survey that investigated in-depth their perceptions and attitudes of wilderness.49 In other words the research revealed that it is
possible to have a clear idea of what wilderness is and its value without having had a first-hand experience of it. It found ‘strong’ agreement with the statement: “it’s good to know wilderness still exists, even if I decide never to use it”.50 This is a sentiment echoed elsewhere by wilderness photographer
Nic Bishop who, in introducing his book of Untouched Horizons, writes of others who “are reassured simply by knowing that there still exists a heartland whose pulse beats with the rhythm of nature.”51
In one part of the survey respondents were asked “to list, in order of importance, the images that came to mind when thinking about the term ‘wilderness’.”52 From these responses Shultis formed ten cumulative
categories which in order of preference were: “bush/native forest, no evidence of impact, trees/forest/vegetation, peace/solitude/freedom, remote/isolated, primeval/original condition, nature/scenery/beauty, mountains/alpine, animals/birds/wildlife, rivers/waterfalls”.53 In these
categories can be discerned a split between what might be seen and what might be sensed. Visions of bush, trees, mountains, birds and waterfalls elicited sensations of peace, isolation, beauty in a primeval state.
These responses demonstrate not what a wilderness as a topographically defined region out-there is. Rather they reveal what the respondents’ understanding of – and consequently their anticipated experience of – what wilderness might be. Such a distinction is exemplified by Hugh Logan’s description of the Okuru Wilderness Area. What he describes is his own attitude to this region rather than an absolute condition. In his meeting of nature on its own terms Logan’s perspective places himself as apart from,
49 Shultis, 2001, The duality of wilderness: Comparing popular and political conceptions of wilderness in New Zealand, p67.
50 Ibid, p68.
51 Bishop, 1989, Untouched horizons : photographs from the South Island wilderness, p8.
52 Shultis, 2001, The duality of wilderness: Comparing popular and political conceptions of wilderness in New Zealand, p69.
rather than as part of, nature. Further, by describing his presence there as a ‘visitor’ he defines and constrains through his own conception of what wilderness is the type of relationships possible in this region. For Logan, wilderness’ purpose is the production of a rich personal emotional state that elicits for him – but not necessarily for others in the same place – experiential qualities of uncertainty, challenge and ultimately personal achievement.
It is in this regard that wilderness describes not only specific regions but also both people’s conceptualisation of the term and the experiential states such conceptualisations anticipate. This makes defining wilderness difficult, as what it is, and where it is found, is both variable and contested. In this sense wilderness does not operate as a clear and precise condition that can be located within a set of Cartesian properties. Instead it is an imprecise term whose meaning lies in a culturally bound contingency. Hence in the New Zealand context wilderness is part of a constellation of terms that also includes ‘the natural landscape’ and ‘the bush’ which are used to describe an assemblage of conceptual spaces.
Logan’s sentiments and Shultis’ survey represent a snapshot of the presently held cultural qualities of wilderness. Various studies note the need for longitudinal research to be conducted so changes in people’s perspectives can be monitored over time.54 In his study Shultis suggests “this data tends to
generate as many questions as answers. For example, the research has not addressed the source of the popular conception of wilderness. What specific sources of information do people access to accumulate their personal definition and images of wilderness?”55
While further survey-based research might quantify their respective importance, there can readily be identified a myriad of methods by which particular concepts of wilderness are disseminated throughout New Zealand. Such qualities are manifest in the urban marketplace as much as in being located in any specific type or experience of landscape.56 These multiple –
though not necessarily uniform – voices underpin the images by Apse that began this chapter and also the publishing outputs of Craig Potton Press,
54 See, for example, Kearsley, Kliskey, Higham and Higham, 1999, Perception of wilderness in the South Island of New Zealand : a multiple images approach. ; Booth and New Zealand. Department of Conservation., 2006, Review of visitor research for the Department of Conservation.
55 Shultis, 2001, The duality of wilderness: Comparing popular and political conceptions of wilderness in New Zealand, p71.
Hedgehog House and numerous other contributing photographers and authors. They are found in the many stacks of calendars sold for the international tourist and domestic Christmas gift markets, and that find their way into the homes and workplaces of people in New Zealand and around the world. Other sources include: the New Zealand Outdoor Equipment and Clothing Industry whose diverse brand-values, catalogues and websites distribute particular ideas of and attitudes to wilderness57; various tourism
campaigns run by individual operators, regions and Tourism New Zealand58;
the imagery that provides the setting for a myriad of movies; numerous first- hand accounts of adventure59; of the multiple ways the images of indigenous
forests are used to sell anything from the ruggedness of cars60 the naturalness
of cosmetics,61 and the purity of fruit juice and wine62; and also the various
promotions, publications, visitor centres and interpretation displays overseen by the Department of Conservation.63
However before looking more deeply into ways these multiple ideas of wilderness are made and distributed, and also the manner of the relationship with the conservation estate these concepts of wilderness directs, it is relevant to consider the development of New Zealand’s conservation estate.