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Susan Cook and Weasel
Boatwright knew as soon as they spotted the patch of West Coast
bush north of Westport that their long hunt to find a site for
their eco-lodge was over.
On one side, the Mokihinui
River takes a break from its headlong rush from the mountains to
the sea, with a languid clear pool making a natural swimming
hole. Look the other way and the moss-clad and forested hills
rise with typically Kiwi steepness onto the tussock tops of the
Glasgow Range. And in between there was a shelf of land amid
soaring podocarp forest which is where the Rough and Tumble Bush
Lodge now sits.
But Kiwi-born Cook said she
and Boatwright, a veteran of running a back country lodge in the
Appalachian mountains in his native United States, were
attracted as much by what they couldn’t see as much as what they
could.
“We’re here, on this very
site, because in every direction you look it’s all native,” Cook
said. “There’s nothing exogenous. It’s a spectacular site and
we’re the last people on the road in an area that prides itself
as being the real New Zealand.”
The couple wanted ‘eco’ to
be the guiding principle of the lodge rather than just a trendy
prefix. Although the area had already been logged, the plentiful
West Coast rain means the forest has made a hearty recovery. The
trees felled to make way for the lodge were milled on site and
incorporated into the deliberately rustic construction, which in
turn was balanced by solar hot water heating, double glazing and
energy-efficient appliances. The couple also place as high an
importance in educating their guests about the environment as
the trapping and monitoring they do for pest plant and animal
species.
The Rough and Tumble Bush
Lodge’s story has been repeated throughout New Zealand. For all
the huge business tourism has become, almost invariably at the
heart of ecotourism in this country are small operators who care
passionately and advocate tirelessly, turning warm fuzzies into
cold cash.
New Zealand’s foremost
example, Whale Watch Kaikoura, might have a corporate sheen now
but it began as a risky venture, initiated by the leading
members of a small town defying a destiny of supplying petrol
and mince pies to drivers speeding from one urban centre to
another. For all the millions of dollars it channels back into
the community now, Whale Watch began with people willing to
mortgage their homes to the hilt and made no money for the first
five years.
There have been many, many
others. A group of farmers near Akaroa who struggled to make a
living from their scenic but unproductive land began the Banks
Peninsula Track in 1989, where quirky accommodation and a
plethora of human touches captured perfectly the authentic
experience that draws tourists from halfway around the world.
Mark Brabyn began Hiking
New Zealand as a one-man business in 1993, taking two 10-day
hiking tours through the South Island. As it expanded, it put
its money where its brochures were by donating a percentage of
takings to wildlife research, tallying more than $50,000 in the
past nine years for studies of the Hector’s Dolphin.
In 1985, Akaroa Harbour
Nature Cruises operated a single vessel but has since become the
Black Cat Group, not only offering wildlife tours and dolphin
experiences on Lyttelton and Akaroa harbours but also fostering
education and understanding into the Hector’s dolphins that are
the centrepiece of their tours.
Former Forest and Bird
president Gerry McSweeney, along with his wife Anne, had to sell
their home to buy the old highway construction camp beside Lake
Moeraki in south Westland in 1989. Using his training as a
botanist and ecologist, they turned it into one of New Zealand’s
first dedicated ecolodges and leveraged off their success to
create a bigger purpose-built Wilderness Lodge on Cora Lynn
station on the Arthur’s Pass highway.
He’s described his approach
as pragmatic. “There’s been this tendency to put
conservationists and environmental groups on one side, and
business opposite them,” McSweeney said. “But today the reality
is it’s not some fringe thing, it’s mainstream.”. |
