Price of playing in the dunes

New Zealanders love and cherish the countryside and coast we flock to on holiday. Or do we? GEOFF CUMMING reports


Accentuating the positive is the idea behind the Climate Change Office's campaign to encourage us to do our bit to combat global warming. The "4 million careful owners" summer advertising campaign promoted the concept of New Zealanders as enthusiastic protectors of the country's clean, green image.

It's an image we take with us to the beaches, collectively willing the lingering vestiges of summer to keep winter at bay as the Easter break rolls into the school holidays.

But ask those at the pitface of safeguarding our coastal environment - DoC and regional council officials - and they will shake their heads in despair at the damage, both wilful and unwitting, done by humans.

At one end of the spectrum is vandalism; at the other the mounting toll on beaches and dunes caused by the explosion in off-road vehicles.

DoC field officer John Gaukrodger tells of what's become a summer ritual at a DoC reserve at Hahei on the Coromandel Peninsula.

"For the third year running, somebody got a big boulder from up the hill and smashed it down on the steps in the midsection. The damage is just about identical every year, which just about tells me it's somebody who goes to Hahei every year. This year, we ended up with three or four broken steps. One year we lost six or seven steps and the side rail."

Our unspoiled beaches are a mecca for unofficial campers who leave litter, and worse, in the bush. Gaukrodger says volunteers who patrol these reserves are "pretty disgusted" by what they find. "But policing and repair involve a level of oversight that comes back on the taxpayer when we should be doing something else."

Signs are a favoured target. "We put one in the other day. It was defaced by the next morning." The average track information sign costs $400-$500. "You're looking at $15,000 to $20,000 a year on the Coromandel.

"Quite often we leave them if they are still readable, but they still look crappy and it's being seen by tourists. It's not acceptable."

Other incidents this summer included the destruction of a boardwalk installed to protect the dunes at Matapouri Bay, in Northland. It was used for firewood.

"These activities make my blood boil. People wreck it, we fix it - they wreck it, we fix it. At some point in time either they get tired of wrecking it or we catch them at it."

The time conservation officials fear most is New Year, when "the youth of New Zealand goes berserk. All logic goes out the door."

Pohutukawa-draped Orokawa Bay, north of Waihi, is a remote coastal gem struggling under the weight of human activity. Access is by boat or a half-hour walk from the DoC carpark, where signs warn that dogs and camping are banned.

But volunteers say the bay's isolation adds to its attraction. Camping, fires and dogs take a toll on work to enhance the reserve. Favoured spots for a camp fire include the roots of pohutukawas, which provide shelter.

Says Gaukrodger: "There are people who turn up on a boat with an axe and knock over a few nikau palms for a bivouac and live like Robinson Crusoe for a few days."

The outdoors' increasing popularity is its own worst enemy. In the past, says Gaukrodger, beach reserves could tolerate a bit of unofficial camping. Nowadays there's so much pressure, officers take a tougher line, directing people to DoC's basic official campsites "designed to preserve the experience of New Zealand culture and heritage".

But pointing campers in the right direction requires diplomacy and officers often cop at least a verbal barrage for their trouble. Gaukrodger has detected a hardening of public attitudes. "Lots of New Zealanders are very reluctant to give way to the extent they have in the past for wildlife conservation.

"A lot of people do volunteer work out of their own pockets and they are treated the same way as we are.

"We learn to live with it - we're public servants, we are open to abuse. But so much done by private individuals is trashed."

Yet vandals are a small minority of those drawn to DoC reserves to experience the great outdoors. Harm is more likely to be inadvertent. Holidays are crunch time - when the rubber hits the sand as Aucklanders flock to the beach. Modern beachgoer accessories include much more than a bucket and spade, ranging from walking boots and dogs to quad bikes, four-wheel-drives and land yachts.

For the volunteers in coast care and habitat protection programmes, the ignorance of others can be disheartening. They'll be out in their thousands over winter, planting native grasses to preserve the dunes, fencing off nesting areas, even shifting nests ahead of storms and king tides. Often, they end up spreading fertiliser to restore dune plants damaged by vehicles and foot traffic.

In the north, fingers are crossed for the endangered fairy tern. The six chicks which survived the breeding season raised hopes for a population which had dwindled to 35.

Dogs are as big a threat as humans and their toys, says Katrina Hansen, a conservation officer involved in fairy tern recovery programmes at Mangawhai and Waipu Cove.

"Birds react more to the presence of dogs than people." Last year, the owners of dogs seen taking oyster catcher and dotterel chicks were fined $200. But prosecutions are rare.

In the Bay of Plenty, the short summer restricted another threatened shorebird, the dotterel, to one brood, although a 12-year project to protect remaining habitats has done much to raise the bird's long-term prospects. But dotterel nests are often invisible to those who don't know what to look for - five chicks were run over or trampled on this season, says Matakana Island monitoring officer Gill Palmer.

Chicks are also cut off from feeding grounds by people walking on the beach at low tide. "They starve and die, simple as that," says Gaukrodger.

The burgeoning popularity of four-wheel-drive vehicles has increased the pressure by degrees. DoC Northland conservation officer Ian Hogarth says 4WDs and quad bikes are now a major form of recreation and dunes are hugely tempting terrain.

Vehicle damage can lead to "blowouts," where wind-driven dunes go on the march. "They just flow like water if the vegetation cover is removed. We get rolling dunes overwhelming farmland and pine plantations."

Rather than pay to use traditional off-roading areas such as the Woodhill and Riverhead state forests, Aucklanders take their ATVs and SUVs (all terrain and sports utility vehicles) further afield, to beaches in Northland, Franklin and the Bay of Plenty. One hotspot is the Poutu Peninsula, 55km of rolling dunes stretching south from Dargaville to the northern entrance to the Kaipara Harbour.

Tim Brandenberg, DoC area manager for the Kauri Coast, says people see dunes and beaches as free-for-alls. "You go to the beach, all the trappings fall away and yahoo! [Owners of] off-road vehicles are no exception."

Not all 4WD vehicles on the road belong to Remuera farmers, says Brandenberg. "In rural areas, every second car is a 4WD. On any given weekend there's an awful lot of people going up and down the beach in all sorts of vehicles."

Thrill-seeking tourists are increasing the pressure, with Poutu and Dargaville tour operators keen to boost the profile of the remote, unspoilt coastline. Brandenberg says most visitors are from Northland or Auckland. "School holidays are the worst. There's a surprising amount of people out there."

South of Auckland, west coast beaches including Karioitahi, near Waiuku, and Port Waikato are points of friction between competing groups of beach users. Franklin District Council parks officer Greg Lowe says it's the absence of rules which attracts offroaders "who just like to get out there" to Karioitahi's low dunes and steep-sided cliffs. "I see trailers full of ATVs going through Franklin so the whole family can go ripping up the sand."

He says the dune system has been badly degraded, with impacts on the beach, shellfish and bird habitats.

"It's a bit of a fallacy, the old clean-green image," says Lowe.

Illegal dumping in the district is not confined to the roadside in Franklin. He finds domestic rubbish tossed on the banks of the Waikato River.

But most of us are not beyond redemption. At Port Waikato, a coast care group has improved locals' awareness and led to "an element of self-policing". Waiuku residents are interested in doing the same at Karioitahi.

"There is an element attracted to Karioitahi - it's all to do with youth and drinking. They chainsaw up our fences and access ways to burn them for firewood. If the signs last three months you're lucky. It's only a small percentage but it has a huge impact."

Up on the Poutu Peninsula, DoC has joined forces with the Kaipara District Council, local iwi, Forest and Bird and tourism and adventure operators to protect the sensitive dune environment, as well as archaeological and wahi tapu sites. A management plan has been prepared and attention has turned to an education kit.

"We haven't got the people on the ground to enforce from a legal point of view," says Brandenberg. "[So] we have to try and educate people. A lot of the time people have no idea what they are damaging."

But cut the off-road racer some slack. Many 4WD enthusiasts are sensitive to environmental issues and willing to limit their activities - a blanket ban on these vehicles in reserves and on beaches is not sought by DoC.

Four Wheel Drive Association president Peter Vahry says environmental damage would be minimised if authorities provided for off-roading in suitable areas.

"When there's something that people want to do, you find a place for it. As long as the people managing public lands [in Auckland] don't provide for it, we've got a problem."

The association represents only a small minority of 4WD owners and Vahry makes the point that requirements such as public liability insurance deter officially organised activity in the state forests.

Most 4WD owners at some stage succumb to the urge to test what the lever by their gearstick does, he says. A wide open beach, with no trees to hit, is a powerful lure.

"What we would like to see is managed use of resources. If beaches are not being used during winter, and you're not going to terrorise the birds, why not make them more available?

"The impacts can be managed - people can be educated to leave sensitive areas but there needs to be awareness."

Harley Spence, chairman of the Coastal Dune Vegetation Network, says controlled access points on beaches can limit the impacts. "It's the large scale unrestricted use of the dune environment which causes harm."

Spence says people walking or riding horses through the dunes can cause as much damage as vehicles.

"There are so many interest groups using our coastline. It's important to have an integrated approach so all users can access the coast without doing damage in the process."