Hi --- I just noticed you lot are commenting about this across the ditch, too. Guess I'm a bit late. Nobody's yet linked to Graeme Kates' website at
http://www.softrock.co.nz/mg/index.php?page=217 , so I'll throw that link into the mix. Graeme Kates is the former DoC Visitor Centre employee (from Arthurs Pass) and former chairperson of LandSAR in that area (he resigned from both positions in protest), who's been kicking up the stink about the changes. I don't think he's so concerned about the change itself as with the way it's being done. I tend to agree with him, and we got another little discussion going on my blog at
http://www.windy.gen.nz/?p=619In short, DoC has only been managing intentions in this specific way in two places, being the Arthurs Pass and Mt Cook visitors' centres. Everywhere else in NZ, people have
always been responsible for themselves and their own safety, but in these two places the DoC staff had taken on a role of taking people's intention sheets, and then acting on it if people didn't sign out. (DoC reckons this is inconsistent with everywhere else, and that it's confusing to tourists when sometimes they're nearly forced to leave intentions and other times DoC staff don't want to take them at all.) Also (at present) it's
only Arthurs Pass where the system's being stopped---Graeme reckons that's because the Mt Cook staff had a more forceful local manager to stand up for the system. Despite not taking intentions, staff will still be around to talk to people about plans when visiting the area, but they
won't be taking intentions in any way that obliges them to do anything if they never hear from the person again. It'll be up to people to find their own trusted contact person and keep that person informed.
Personally I think it's perfectly fine that DoC wants to get out of the business of being responsible for other people. The NZ system has always been built on a premise that the government is a caretaker for public land, and not a gatekeeper, that anyone can enter and exit at their will and be responsible for themselves as long as they follow the rules of leaving the place as they found it. These two instances of DoC taking responsibility for people's back-country safety is a weird aberration. As wayno pointed out, tourism's complicated that in recent years because suddenly there are large numbers of international visitors who expect something different. Graeme's biggest point (I think) is the way that it's happening, considering about two thirds of the visitors to the Arthurs Pass visitor centre are international tourists. It's effectively just being pulled with nothing to replace it, and the staff on the ground were barely consulted.
The
http://www.adventuresmart.org.nz/ website which DoC's championing is nothing more than an English language information website that tries to help people structure their intentions whether it's by filling out a paper form to give to someone, entering details into a web form that gets emailed to a person they nominate, or hopping over to a social trip organisation website like
http://www.roughplan.com/ which can be configured (if they user knows what they're doing) to send a panic notice to a person they nominate if they haven't checked in. It does nothing to verify that a person's provided useful information in their intentions, or that their nominated contact person will have a clue what they're doing, if they're doing it at all, or even if they're in the same time zone. It's a very passive way of interacting with a substantial number of people who will often have no useful trustworthy people with whom they can actually
leave intentions, irrespective of how they do it, and rely on that person to raise an alarm at an appropriate time.
I think it'd work fine if there were a replacement service set up as a replacement over a long enough time for all the guidebooks to be updated, specifically for taking intentions from people who didn't have their own reliable trusted person, and maybe for a nominal fee if that's really a problem, and then acting appropriately if the person didn't check in. There will be other options, too, but the problem is more about the way this has all been done.