Thread: Hunting in NZ, is it too easy?

Originally Posted by veitnamcam

exactly ebf, its a global market and we are giving it away for free.

yes and no VC. NZ is at the bottom end of the world, it is not cheap getting here. as Ryan has pointed out before, every single tourist that gets here, does spend money in other ways. without tourist $, most of the small south island towns would simply cease to exist. have you seen what Te Anau looks like when the Milford road is closed ?

do we really want to reduce or increase the number of tourists ? how are you going to control access to public land ? will each "foreign" visitor wanting to do do one of the big walks have to pay extra ? how are you going to distinguish a tramper from a hunter or fisherman ? are you going to employ a horde of rangers just to do checking of permits ?

i used to do a lot of travel in Namibia. they significantly raised the national park fees for non-residents (to the point where it was ridiculous - hotel price for a tent site), I simply ended up going somewhere else ... it would be interesting to see how much of NZ's income, especially SI depends of tourism.

it would also be interesting if someone has stats of actual numbers of search-and-rescue for foreigners vs locals. see what the real picture is without the assumption that it is generally some clueless tourist.

and mikee, NZ is unique in that hunting is allowed on public conservation land. that situation does not exist in most of africa (commercial game farms). where you can hunt national parks, the fees are ploughed back into conservation, with such high prices that none of the locals could ever afford it (the extreme other end of what you have here). not sure how it works in mruca...