Questions raised as another Te Urewera hut destroyed

A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.

The Māori entity responsible for managing Te Urewera says it is complying with a court order temporarily forbidding it to demolish any more of the area's huts and that it's not to blame for one that burned down earlier this week.

In October, Te Uru Taumatua (TUT) — the operating arm of Ngāi Tūhoe — began a controversial programme to “decommission” 43 Department of Conservation- owned huts in Te Urewera.

By early last month it had demolished 29 of them before a High Court injunction forced it to stop.

On Tuesday this week, a trapper contracted by TUT reported finding the recently burned remains of Otamatuna hut, in Waimana Valley.

The hut was not previously available for public use but was built specifically for people doing biodiversity work such as pest control and monitoring of rare species like kōkako.

In a statement, TUT said it was sending a worker to inspect the damage and had notified the Department of Conservation (DoC) as the hut's owner.

It was not responsible for the destruction of Otamatuna hut, TUT said.

“Te Uru Taumatua is abiding by the current interim order of the High Court from November that no huts be removed from Te Urewera pending a substantive hearing on the matter.

“Te Uru Taumatua's hut decommissioning programme, while described as “burning” in the media, involved methodical deconstruction with burning as only one part of the process, and was carried out subject to strict health and safety procedures by supervised teams in appropriate weather,” the statement said.

The Department of Conservation said it had reported the fire to police.

The incident has caused concern among some locals and conservationists.

Former Te Urewera Mainland Island kōkako recovery project manager Pete Shaw, whose objections to many aspects of TUT's management of Te Urewera have been widely reported, told RNZ this week the latest fire was a “travesty”.

“It's just part of the ongoing degradation of Te Urewera under Te Uru Taumatua. They've let the tracks grow over, they've let the weeds run rampant, they've let the pests go ballistic,” Shaw said.

But a trustee of Tetaiahape Marae in the Waimana Valley, Matt Te Pou, told RNZ he believed the fire was someone getting up to a “bit of mischief”.

“I'm certainly of the view that it's not anyone in Te Uru Taumatua that would do that. Those who were originally burning those huts were doing it under instruction.

“There's a legal case on that to protect the final huts that are there, so I don't see it as Te Uru Taumatua, because what would they gain out of it? They'd gain nothing.”