National park draft plan ready at last | Manawatu-Wanganui News | Local News in Manawatu-Wanganui

After at least seven years of adjustment the Department of Conservation, its board and Whanganui Maori have reached agreement over a management plan for Whanganui National Park.

The draft plan will be handed over to the New Zealand Conservation Authority next week by the Taranaki/Whanganui Conservation Board and Whanganui River Maori Trust Board chairman Brendon Puketapu.

The handover will happen at Paraweka Marae in Pipiriki on February 9.

Following the handover members of the authority will have an overnight stay upriver at Tieke Kainga and a trip to the Bridge to Nowhere, to get a better understanding of the park.

When the authority has approved the plan, the DoC will be able to start implementing it.

A start was made on the plan in 2003. But Taranaki/Whanganui Conservation Board chairman Darryn Ratana said Maori were not involved to the extent they had been anticipating since the park's opening in 1986.

There were protests and occupations in the early 2000s.

The board was concerned that the Maori community, in particular, was feeling left out.

A lot of dialogue had happened since then, making both sides reasonably comfortable.

Mr Ratana said what really clinched it for Maori was an undertaking by the DoC to engage with them over what happened in the park, but it was not about setting them above any other part of the community.

The plan reflected a new way of working together that largely began with the arrival of the current conservator, Damian Coutts.

Getting to agreement on it was hugely significant for the board, because it was the core of its work.

Mr Ratana was delighted to get to that stage.

He said Whanganui National Park was different from others.

It was surrounded by private land, people lived with it and there was Maori land interspersed within it.

The plan would cement an enduring partnership, Mr Ratana said, at a time when the DoC needed partnerships with community groups to perform its functions.

The next priority for the board would be securing more central government funding for conservation.

"It's all very well having these tracts of conservation estate, but if we don't have the resource to implement the plan it's just words on paper," he said.

The Whanganui National Park draft management plan will be presented to the New Zealand Conservation Authority on February 9, at Paraweka Marae.

The powhiri will start at 9.30 and the meeting will be open to the public.