National Park
Residents of National Park were concerned about rubbish and waste.
"I’ve had to carry massive bags of rubbish because I’m going for a walk with my dog along the main road. I would love some be a tidy kiwi signs. The type of rubbish I find, it’s random stuff."
"Public holidays, it’s people from out of town who don’t respect this. It’s that tourism stomping boot that comes through. But that’s not locals generally. The council had an initiative that if you were walking you could have a free bag to pick up rubbish and dispose of that for free at the transfer station."
"I found DVDs, VHS players. Things from back in the day. I could have opened a shop. Honestly! It was like rubbish off a trailer."
Relatedly, the lack of soft plastic recycling options was frustrating for participants.
"It's just, there's nowhere to drop them off. Not at the transfer station. You just have to throw them in the bin."
"The Council is just not interested. They’re not interested in doing the slightest little thing, even like a bailer that we could shrink our soft plastics in and then we could drop it off somewhere else. That’s 90% of my domestic rubbish. Because everything else is… it’s the stuff that stuff comes packed in. I try to avoid it, but you just can’t… there’s still some things you have to buy that come in plastic."
"When it comes to rubbish, the Council talks the talk, but I’m not convinced. "
"We don't do curb side collection here so we can't do the composting initiative they have. And the transfer station is only manned certain hours so people fly tip, leaving their rubbish at the gates or throw it out of their car so rubbish is a big problem."
Similar to 2020, residents of National Park were concerned, and often dismayed, about how tourists treated Tongariro National Park:
"Because of the significance of the mountains around here, and we’re very blessed to be living in the presence of these tipuna, that hasn’t really been…. it's just ski field, you know? It's just like, sit… and actually look at what you've got. A blessing to see."
"A lot of people coming for the day from, mostly Auckland, don't recognise this is a national park they’re coming into. They see it as a ski field. People take their animals not realising they can't take dogs into there. "
"There are kiwis that live here. There are kiwi crossing signs on the road and it's like, "Did you know that there are kiwis that live here?""
"A lot of people think that they're just promotional. They don't realise that it's a proper road sign. They think it’s; they’ve seen a postcard... they think that they're there so you can take a selfie, they don't realise that this road sign is there for a reason."
"If they were aware of it perhaps they’d respect it a bit more. Maybe it’s a case of having a “Welcome to….” Like a gateway, "Welcome to Tongariro National Park Area" a heritage park, first national park in New Zealand. Third in the world. And people might be like, “Oh, this is something worth....""
"There's nothing when you come into National Park Village which is the gateway to Tongariro. THE gateway to THE Tongariro National Park. There's no big announcement that you're now in a world heritage site. A protected area."
"That's to do with building constraints within the national park. I'm dead set against signage."
"I don't know. You go to the US, you go to Yosemite or somewhere, you actually go through a big entrance, or Kruger National Park you go through a big entrance and this is like, you are now, you're paying, you actually have to pay to go in."
"That's absolutely a DOC issue. In their plan for the national park their management plan, is this zero-structure building."
"Well can they do it on Council land."
"Even just a pou."
"There's nothing that says, once you go over this threshold you're now in a protected space."
Another participant highlighted a desire to protect the night sky from light pollution:
"I think the night sky is something we have that is special here and needs protection from neon signs and light. Yes. And that's valuable and that's not just for here but for the whole region. Specifically I know that people love the night sky. So visitors and residents alike. "
