Wikipedia talk:WikiProject New Zealand/National parks

Structure for National Park articles

Is there benefit in trying for at least some consistency in the structure of articles ? I note that there is a WP template for articles about Parks. See: Template:Article templates/Park. Perhaps we could build on this, or even prepare a special version for New Zealand National Parks ? Clearly there will need to be some variations in the structure between articles about our National Parks because of their wide diversity, but how about we try for some consistency ?Marshelec (talk) 06:58, 1 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Here are a few benchmark articles that might be useful in considering a basic standard structure: Yellowstone National Park, Yosemite National Park, Snowdonia National Park, Kakadu National Park, Grampians National Park. Marshelec (talk) 07:09, 1 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There's one which Schwede proposed here which I was going to use as a base, but hadn't got around to adding it to the main page yet. I think this is a pretty good start, with maybe a couple of alterations necessary but hopefully not many. As you said though, there would be some variation based on the park - I would expect that Tongariro and Egmont would have a greater focus on the volcanism and geology than other parks, for instance. Turnagra (talk) 07:16, 1 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Marshelec I've added a draft outline to the main page, would be keen to get your thoughts and revisions if you've got any ideas. Turnagra (talk) 09:00, 1 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Here are some points to ponder:

Protected area designations

It may be of benefit to the encyclopedia to include a specific section with some links or references to the legal protection and other designations of each park. I suspect that the full details would be overwhelming and unnecessary in some cases (such as where the park consists of many parcels of land), but I still think that some references to relevant Acts and key Gazette notices might be helpful. There are also some other designations that could be mentioned (I am thinking here of an example - the areas that are classified as "Wilderness" areas where there are no formed track and no facilities). Finally, some of our National Parks are designated as World Heritage sites. It would be useful to list the citations/ dates.

Where should content like this go ? It could be all in the History section, but this might possibly make it less obvious ?

Occupied areas and facilities within or immediately adjacent to National Parks

Many of our national parks have significant areas of human settlements and major facilities, including visitor facilities located within the outer boundary of the park, or immediately adjacent to the park (although they may be on parcels of land that are not designated as national park). Some examples:

Arthurs Pass National Park has State Highway 73 and a village in the middle
Tongariro National Park has roads, skifields and "on-the-mountain" accommodation
Aoraki / Mt Cook National Park has roads and a village
Fiordland National Park has Manapouri Power Station, the Milford Road, Homer Tunnel and Milford settlement within its overall boundaries
Paparoa National Park has State Highway 6 running through the edge of the park, and the Punakaiki settlement immediately adjacent to the park boundary

These settlements and facilities warrant a brief mention because they enable access to the National Park, but at the same time pose some degree of threat to the protected area.

Many of the national parks are also popular visitor attractions and these facilities help create significant economic benefit for tourism operators, accommodation providers, transport providers etc. Perhaps there may be sources that estimate the economic impact ?

Where is the best place in the planned structure to include content about occupied areas and facilities, and the economic impact (or some other suitable terms to cover these topics) ?

Associated protected areas

For some national parks, there are associated protected areas. Examples include:

Paparoa National Park is adjacent to the Punakaiki Marine Reserve
Abel Tasman National Park has Tonga Island Marine Reserve just offshore

Where is the best place in the planned structure to include content about associated protected areas ?

Marshelec (talk) 04:23, 2 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Listing other similar "good articles"

It might be helpful to list other "good" or "featured" articles from New Zealand related to parks or similar topics? For example:

Cheers, Uninspired Username (talk) 23:14, 5 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

For sure - I've tried to do that for the national parks in the table where there are things related to a specific park that could be inspiration for content, but I'm happy for another section to be added with general articles like that if there are any. We may also want to link to some international national parks with good or featured status - these were used to come up with the heading outline, but they would probably also have more inspiration available. Turnagra (talk) 18:08, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Infobox parameter: nearest_city

I've just changed the ibox parameter for Kahurangi from "nearest_city = Karamea" to "nearest_town = Tākaka". The documentation says: Recommended if the area is not within a city or town. It could be a city with a major airport or a large gateway town where supplies and lodging are available. Use the most appropriate parameter.

Two thoughts:

With regards to this particular NP, Karamea doesn't fit the template documentation at all. The question is whether Tākaka is the best place. It's smaller than Motueka, but you can fly to Tākaka; Motueka also has an aerodrome but no scheduled services. Same restriction applies to Murchison, and it's also smaller (population-wise) than Tākaka. Nelson is also a contender but to me, it's too far away. If you want to do the Heaphy, say, and start in Golden Bay, it's 2.5 hours drive from Nelson airport. Say if you have other thoughts on this.
We should check for the use of this parameter for the other national parks, too.

Schwede 66 20:32, 10 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Kahurangi map

The map comes from OSM and is incorrect. Near Parapara, there are two large private land parcels that are surrounded by the national park. The larger one at least is so large that you'd be able to see it even at thumbnail resolution. From the property details, I see that its size is 225 ha. That's big! This one does have legal road access. I've asked a few locals about it but nobody could tell me why it's in private ownership. [It was last on the market 3 years ago for $6m and it did change hands!]

The other parcel I only know about because I spotted it on the map. It has just under 19 ha and is located right in the heart of what used to be a goldfield. I'm assuming that one of the large companies that started industrial-scale goldmining in the late 1890s bought it and it's never reverted to public land. This one does not have legal road access, but when you zoom in, you can see that the rectangular parcel does have legal road within it.

Now I could try and trace the first property by hand on OSM, and given that it's got legal road access, I know how I could go about that. But since the second parcel would require me to "punch a hole" into the bigger map, I wouldn't know how to achieve that. Luckily, I know someone who would know how to do this. :-) Schwede 66 21:19, 10 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Schwede66: Yes, sounds like something I could do! Just to be clear are you talking about updating the map image, or updating OSM, or both? --Canley (talk) 05:13, 11 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

My assumption is that fixing OSM will fix it all, Canley. Schwede 66 07:44, 11 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed - do we actually need the image map at all? I feel like the interactive OSM map should be plenty. Turnagra (talk) 07:53, 11 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

OK, I've done it on OSM, might take a few days for the data to sync over but you can see the relation here. I hope I understood what you meant and drew the right objects! For your reference, to "punch a hole" in a boundary or any multipolygon, you draw the shape you want to punch out, then add it to the relation and select role=inner. --Canley (talk) 12:06, 11 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Canley I think there may be a significant omission in the OSM map. As far as I can see, it does not show the large area of conservation land in the Mohikinui River catchment (64,400 ha) that was added to the park in 2019, after the cancellation of the proposed hydro power scheme See: [1] If I am correct, I would like to see this added to expand the boundary currently shown in the OSM, partly because the Old Ghost Road cycle trail goes through this region. At present, that article is also deficient because it does not mention the addition of land to the national park, and the fact that the majority of the route is now within the Kahurangi National Park. I don't know what data you can access, but can you please do a bit of digging and let me know ? Thanks Marshelec (talk) 08:35, 12 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Marshelec and Schwede66: OK, I have added the Mohikinui River catchment boundary to the Kahurangi National Park relation, check it out! --Canley (talk) 06:18, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Splendid. Thank you! Schwede 66 06:22, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Abel Tasman NP

FYI, I've written an article for the Awapoto River. Schwede 66 06:21, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I noticed that the river on OSM was only about half as long as it should be, so extended that and connected it to Wikidata too. It doesn't seem to have carried over to the map on the article though, so I'm not entirely sure what's going on - perhaps it needs a relation? Turnagra (talk) 17:43, 14 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Should be appearing on the map now. --Canley (talk) 00:12, 17 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Access section of national park articles

@Schwede66@Turnagra@Uninspired Username Please consider and give me feedback on the extent of coverage of access to national parks that is appropriate. For Kahurangi National Park, there are many points of access. The encyclopedia is not a guidebook or a principle reference map, and so I am currently thinking of not describing all the access points and road ends. For some other National Parks, they may have far fewer access points, and it is perhaps more reasonable to describe each of them. Also, how should we interpret "access". For instance, is this section the right place to discuss any areas that are entry by permit only ? The Honeycomb Hill Cave Specially Protected Area is an example in the Kahurangi National Park - I have mentioned access when discussing the cave area itself under Geography. Is it worth doubling up the coverage of this point ?. Also, the park has a large wilderness area, with no tracks or huts - I have also covered this point under the section for the Tasman Wilderness under Geography, but does it come within "access".? Your feedback will be appreciated. Marshelec (talk) 07:55, 14 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks @Marshelec. Personally I would not describe roads, etc, as that information may become out of date on shorter timescales. We could potentially link to other resources (e.g., pointing a reader to map / access materials provided by the Dept of Conservation).

I would interpret this section as summarizing where the public can go, restrictions to access and other "know before you go" information. What you mentioned about permit-only areas makes sense (and can fit other sections expanding on the reasons for those restrictions). In your example, restating information with fewer details can encourage the reader to read more in the Geography section?

Cheers, Uninspired Username (talk) 17:41, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The Flora carpark is probably one of the more notable access points to Kahurangi, hence that one is certainly worth a mention. As far as I know, it is DOC's highest carpark in the country (in terms of elevation above sea level). It's also the only unsealed road that I'm aware of that has concrete wheel tracks in places because it's so steep. Schwede 66 05:02, 16 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure if it's necessarily something which will have a one-size-fits-all answer. As you mentioned, Kahurangi is huge with lots of access so we may want to be more vague, but for Fiordland we could do a bit of coverage on the Milford Road because of how that's basically the main road into the park. Turnagra (talk) 18:21, 16 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Abel Tasman in Wikidata

I've finished my Wikidata clean-up of Abel Tasman - places should be in the right locations and have better structured data, everything with a Wikipedia page now links properly to OSM, and all the articles on rivers now have improved infoboxes. I haven't linked every single river to OSM, so if anyone makes a new river article, let me know and I'll fix up the OSM relation.

I'll go through each national park alphabetically (I think Egmont and Tongariro are basically done, since I worked on them before) - feel free to request an area to be done first, if this would be helpful! --Prosperosity (talk) 06:05, 19 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Prosperosity! The current focus is Abel Tasman and Kahurangi due to the upcoming meetup in the area, but definitely happy for you to go wherever you see fit if that's going to work better. Turnagra (talk) 06:31, 19 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Turnagra: I'll do Kahurangi next! --Prosperosity (talk) 06:36, 19 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Prosperosity Thanks, that will be great. You may note that I have created a new category en:Category:Rivers of Kahurangi National Park. I moved all the river articles previously assigned to en:Category:Kahurangi National Park into the new category. However, at this stage, I have not done any independent checks for rivers in the park that have articles but are not categorised for Kahurangi. I did find that the Aorere River was missing a Kahurangi category and fixed this, but there may be others, so if possible, please keep a lookout for this, so that the category listing can be as complete as we can make it. I aim to write a brief summary about rivers in the park, with a link to the category for readers to find all the relevant articles. I will probably briefly mention a few of the more notable ones (like Karamea River that has a catchment area that is around 25% of the area of the entire national park).Marshelec (talk) 07:31, 19 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I've now finished the Golden Bay catchment of the Kahurangi National Park (Gordons Pyramid north) on the Tasman side, plus the Moutere River and Heaphy River catchments on the West Coast side. I've also fixed up any river articles for the area (e.g. Parapara River) which now all have interactive maps and more details. Here's a couple of Wikidata queries I've generated:

list of hills in the Kahurangi National Park by height (only showing the hills in the area I've covered).

map of rivers in the Kahurangi National Park, showing the locations of river mouths. --Prosperosity (talk) 04:59, 5 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I've now fixed up the entirely of the Kahurangi National Park Wikidata items - everything should be in the right place, there are no double-ups, and everything listed includes the statement 'located in protected area = Kahurangi National Park'. Whew, that took quite a while!

I've also improved the formatting of all of the en:Category:Rivers of Kahurangi National Park articles bar three (waiting on OpenStreetMap to update). --Prosperosity (talk) 02:58, 20 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Coverage of rivers in articles

I seek feedback on coverage of rivers. For Kahurangi National Park, so far, I have identified 50 rivers in the park that have an article. See en:Category:Rivers of Kahurangi National Park. My question is about how best to cover the topic in the national park article. I intend to include a link to this category, using the Category see also template. Possibilities for coverage in addition to this link are:

provide only a really high level introduction to rivers, mentioning rainfall, topography, without mentioning any river
discuss 5 or so of the largest rivers (by length or catchment area etc) in narrative form
provide a table of data about a few of the largest rivers. Here is a possible presentation, in a sandbox: User:Marshelec/sandbox2.

Comments please. Marshelec (talk) 20:20, 20 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think my preference would be somewhere between 1 and 2 - keeping it as a high level narrative generally, but mentioning some of the more notable rivers and things worth mentioning. Turnagra (talk) 20:31, 20 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

From a very cursory look, there seem to be five major catchment areas (Aorere River, Anatoki River, Cobb River, Karamea River, Heaphy River). I feel that Karamea and Aorere should be discussed since they appear to have the largest catchments, as well as the Cobb River, since it's the only river that has been dammed. Prosperosity (talk) 22:09, 20 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Coverage of National Park management plans and reviews

There is a case for including content in most or all National Park articles about the DOC management plan and the process for review. Although these plans can be cited as sources for various aspects of the National Parks, the plans themselves are worth covering, because they set out important provisions for access, concessions, and a range of other management activities. Some recent draft management plans have been the subject of controversy, plus there has been a substantial pause in the review of some management plans, as a result of the 2018 Supreme Court decision relating to Ngāi Tai ki Tāmaki. I have added some content about the court decision and its implications here: National parks of New_Zealand#2018_Supreme_Court_decision.

With regards to Aoraki Mt Cook National Park, here are some sources about the restart and progress of work on the review of the management plan: [2], [3], [4]. Marshelec (talk) 21:24, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Totally agree - I think they're worth covering for sure, particularly as we have a section in the rough template about the conservation and management of the park. Turnagra (talk) 21:56, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Overlap in content between Fiordland and Fiordland National Park articles

There is a significant overlap in content between the articles Fiordland (about the region) and Fiordland National Park. Plus there is also content in Fiordland that is needed in Fiordland National Park to make that article more complete. A high degree of overlap between these two articles seems undesirable because of the work required to maintain duplicated content. Is there a case for some rationalisation ? One possibility is to substantially trim the article Fiordland (about the region), to focus it on the boundary of the region, and relevant statistical content such as Demographics and economy. This would involve transferring and merging most of the content about history, geography and ecology with Fiordland National Park.I have posted this note on the talk pages of both articles, to try and reach a wide group of editors. Feedback at Talk:Fiordland please.__ Marshelec (talk) 21:22, 4 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]