Tongariro National Park
| Tongariro National Park | |||
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| Location: | Manawatu-Wanganui , New Zealand | ||
| Next city: | Turangi , National Park Village , Ohakune | ||
| Surface: | 786.18 km² | ||
| Founding: | October 1887 | ||
| Visitors: | about 1 million | ||
| Address: |
Tongariro National Park Visitor Center Whakapapa Village State Highway 48 Mount Ruapehu |
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| Tongariro National Park | |
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UNESCO world heritage 
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| National territory: |
 New Zealand
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| Type: | Culture, nature |
| Criteria : | vi, vii, viii |
| Surface: | 78618 ha |
| Reference No .: | 421 |
| UNESCO region : | Asia and Pacific |
| History of enrollment | |
| Enrollment: | 1990 (session 14) |
| Extension: | 1993 |
The Tongariro National Park ( English Tongariro National Park ) is the oldest national park in New Zealand . The park, which extends in the center of the North Island, is a UNESCO World Cultural and Natural Heritage Site .
The Tongariro National Park is the fourth oldest national park in the world. In the center of the park there are three active volcanic mountains: the Tongariro (1968 m), the Ngauruhoe (2291 m) and the Ruapehu (2797 m).
In the area of the national park there are several places of worship of the Māori who venerate the volcanoes as sacred.
geography
location
Tongariro National Park is located in the center of the North Island and today covers an area of 786.18 km square kilometers. The road distance to Auckland in the north is about 330 km and to Wellington in the south 320 km. The national park forms the largest part of the so-called Central Volcanic Plateau . North-northeast of the national park is Lake Taupo , directly to the east the Kaimanawa Mountains , while further west the Whanganui flows (with the national park of the same name in the middle).
Most of the Tongariro National Park is located in the Ruapehu District , the Manawatu-Wanganui , only the northeast belongs to the Taupo District of the ( Waikato region and in the east to the Hawke's Bay region ).
expansion
The park includes the mountain range of the three volcanoes Tongariro, Ngauruhoe and Ruapehu. In addition, the Rotopounamusee and the mountains Pihanga and Kakaramea ( Pihanga Scenic Reserve ), which are about three kilometers north of the actual park area, belong to the national park.
Immediately on the border of the park are the village of National Park and Ohakune , a little further away Turangi , Waiouru and Raetihi . In the park itself there is only the tourism-oriented village of Whakapapa and in the adjacent ski area the Iwikau Village, which consists only of ski huts.
The Tongariro National Park is surrounded by well-developed roads, which also roughly represent the border of the national park, and are therefore easy to reach. To the west, State Highway 4 runs past National Park Village; to the east, State Highway 1 , coming from Taupo , runs parallel to the Tongariro River. The northern connection between these roads is provided by State Highway 47, known as Desert Road , and the southern by State Highway 49. The railway line from Auckland to Wellington also runs through National Park Village and thus along the western border of the park.
climate
The Tongariro National Park is like all of New Zealand in a temperate climate zone . The westerly winds prevailing in New Zealand take in water over the Tasman Sea . Since the volcanoes in Tongariro National Park are the first major land elevation on the North Island apart from Mount Taranaki , the water masses rain down here and rainfalls can be observed almost every day. The differences between the west and east sides are not as great as in the New Zealand Alps , for example , since the volcanoes are not part of a larger mountain range and there is a kind of chimney effect. However, the east side of Rangipo Desert is much drier, as can be seen on the adjacent satellite photo. In Whakapapa the average rainfall is 2200 millimeters per year, in Ohakune 1250 millimeters and in higher elevations like in Iwikau Village 4900 millimeters. The snow line is usually around 1500 meters. The temperatures fluctuate very strongly, sometimes even over the course of a day. You can drop below freezing point in Whakapapa year round. The average temperature there is 13 ° C, the maximum in summer is 25 ° C, the minimum in winter is −10 ° C. In some summers the peaks of the three mountains remain snow-covered, the Ruapehu always has snowfields and is glaciated.
history
The peaks of the three volcanoes are of great importance to the local Māori.
In order to prevent exploitation of the mountains by the white immigrants, Te Heuheu gave Tukino IV (Horonuku) , chief of the Ngati Tuwharetoa , the core of today's national park consisting of the peaks of Tongariro, Ngauruhoe and parts on behalf of his tribe on September 23, 1887 of the Ruapehu of the British Crown on condition that a protection zone be created there. However, this 26.40 square kilometer area was generally considered to be too small to build a national park modeled on the Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming ( USA ), so more land was purchased. When the New Zealand Parliament passed the Tongariro National Park Act in October 1894 , the park was supposed to cover about 252.13 square kilometers, but these land purchases continued until 1907. When the law was renewed in 1922, this area could be more than doubled to 586.80 square kilometers. Various extensions, especially the inclusion of the areas outside the actual park in 1975, have allowed the park to grow to its current size of 795.98 square kilometers. The last change in law took place in 1980. Since its establishment in 1987, the park has been under the Department of Conservation .
The first activities in the newly created Tongariro National Park consisted of building some huts for tourists in the early 20th century . It was not until the railroad was opened up around 1910 and roads were built in the 1930s that large numbers of people visited the area. With the second Tongariro National Park Act 1922, the actual beginning of active landscape management was made. It was not until 1931 that the first overseer permanently residing in the park took up his work. However, the road in Whakapapa was expanded in the 1920s and the hotel known as Chateau Tongariro was built in 1929 , which is still the center of Whakapapa today. Also at this time, in 1923, the first ski hut was built at an altitude of 1770 meters, later a road followed and in 1938 the first lift in this area. This early tourist development explains the rather unusual presence of a permanently inhabited village and a well-developed ski area within the park boundaries for a national park.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the park administration introduced Besenheide to make grouse hunting possible. Grouse were never released, but the common heather is now rampant and poses a threat to the ecosystem and the endemic plants of the park. Efforts are now being made to prevent the further spread of this plant, as complete eradication does not seem possible.
In January 1991, UNESCO declared the Tongariro National Park a World Heritage Site. Two years later, it was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site after the criteria for this were changed at a conference in Berlin that same year and since then cultural landscapes have also been able to achieve this status. The reason given was that the Tongariro National Park was directly and tangibly connected to events, lived traditions, ideas and beliefs of global importance, representative of the culture of the Ngati Tuwharetoa, prone to irreversible changes, a representative of the interaction of human values and cultural ideas about different epochs, a place where significant geological and geomorphic processes take place as well as extraordinary natural beauty and outstanding natural phenomena and a place which contains values of outstanding importance from a scientific and nature or monument protection point of view.
Various scenes from the film trilogy The Lord of the Rings were filmed in Tongariro National Park. After the shooting of battle scenes, the park later required renovation work to remove any damage. Mount Ngauruhoe can be seen as Mount Doom in the film.
geology
The three volcanic mountains Tongariro, Ngauruhoe and Ruapehu form the southern end of a 2,500-kilometer chain of volcanoes that were created when the Pacific and Indo-Australian plates meet. All three volcanoes are still active.
Flora and fauna
The Tongariro National Park is a rough and in parts unstable habitat. In the north and west of the park there is a rainforest with stone beeches that survived the eruption of the Taupo volcano on an area of 30 square kilometers up to a height of 1000 meters . In it you can find the Hall's Totara ( Podocarpus hallii ), the New Zealand warthog ( Dacrycarpus dacrydioides ), the variegated Kamahi tree ( Weinmannia racemosa ) and the Pahautea ( Libocedrus bidwillii ) as well as a variety of epiphytic ferns , orchids and mushrooms . The Pahautea also covers an additional area of 127.3 square meters at higher altitudes up to 1530 meters. Furthermore, at this altitude there is a 50 square kilometer beech forest with red beeches ( Nothofagus fusca ), silver beeches ( Nothofagus menziesii ) and southern mountain beeches ( Nothofagus solandri var. Cliffortioides ). Another 95 square kilometers from one bushes from Kanuka ( Leptospermum ericoides ) Manuka ( Leptospermum scoparium ), Tasmanian Blatteibe ( Phyllocladus aspleniifolius ), the Austral Heide greenhouse Dracophyllum longifolium ( "Grass"), Pip patens ( Racomitrium lanuginosum ) and small southern beech covered as well as the introduced heather . In the northwest and around the Ruapehu, between 1200 and 1500 meters above sea level (around 150 square kilometers), only clumps of Chionochloa rubra , grass tree, Dracophyllum recurvum , Empodisma minus , Schoenus pauciflorus and common heather as well as the grasses New Zealand fescue ( Festuca novaezelandiae ) and grass can be found Blue bluegrass ( Poa colensoi ). Over 1500 meters the terrain consists of stones and rubble and is accordingly unstable. Nevertheless, there are always a few plants that settle there. These include Dracophyllum recurvum , snow stone slice ( Podocarpus nivalis ), the pseudo-berry species Gaultheria colensoi , Rytidosperma setifolium , blue bluegrass and Raoulia albosericea , which together cover an area of 165 square kilometers. Between 1700 meters and 2020 meters there are also a few different Parahebe species, Gentiana gellidifolia and buttercups . But above 2200 meters you will only find lichens .
In the animal world, especially vertebrates, the 56 different bird species are of particular importance. Among them are rare endemic species such as the northern striped kiwi , cocoa , green- billed duck ( Hymenolaimus malacorhynchus ), fern climber ( Bowdleria punctata vealeae ) and also double ringed plover ( Charadrius bicinctus ) and Maori falcon ( Falco novaeseelandiae ). Are often represented Tui ( Prosthemadera novaeseelandiae ), Maori Glockenhonigfresser ( Anthornis melanura ) Neuseelandkuckuckskauz ( Ninox novaeseelandiae ), Gray Warbler ( Gerygone igata ), fantail (Rhipidurinae) and Greymantle Brillenvogel ( Zosterops lateralis ). Another special feature is also the only two endemic in New Zealand mammal species, the New Zealand lesser short-tailed bat ( Mystacina tuberculata ) and the New Zealand-lobe bat ( chalinolobus tuberculatus ). In addition, the Tongariro National Park is teeming with insects such as moths and wetas . A threat to these animals as well as to the entire ecosystem - as in large parts of New Zealand - are the animals introduced by Europeans such as black rats , ermines , domestic cats and also wild rabbits , various real hares , black kusu and red deer .
activities
The main activities are hiking and mountaineering in summer and skiing and snowboarding in winter. There is also the possibility of hunting , fishing , mountain biking, horse riding , rafting and sightseeing flights over the national park. The most famous hiking route in the Tongariro National Park is probably the Tongariro Alpine Crossing , a one-day hike that is often counted among the most beautiful in the world. Most of the route is part of the Tongariro Northern Circuit , a two- to four-day hiking route that is designated as one of New Zealand's nine Great Walks . On these routes it is also possible to make side trips to the peaks of Tongariro and Ngauruhoe, among others. Another hiking route is the three to six-day Round the Mountain Track around Ruapehu. There are also some other shorter hiking routes that are worthwhile for day trips. With this route network, three tent sites, two emergency shelters, nine freely accessible state and four private huts as well as the facilities in Whakapapa, the park is considered to be developed for tourism; further expansion of the offers is currently not planned.
The hiking routes can also be run as alpine tours in winter. This applies to the ascent to the summit of Ruapehu all year round. There are also opportunities for mountaineering. The winter sports season begins at the end of June at the earliest and lasts until the beginning of November at the latest. The largest ski area (also called Whakapapa) is located on the western slope of Ruapehu. It has 15 lifts and a total area of 55 square kilometers. Immediately at the ski area there are 47 private, club-operated huts, but most of them also accept non-club members. The next overnight accommodation is then at the foot of the mountain in Whakapapa. The Turoa ski area in the southwest is only slightly smaller. Although it only has nine lifts, the total area is almost as large at 50 square kilometers. There is no overnight accommodation right in the ski area, the closest place is Ohakune. The two ski areas have now merged so that, for example, the lift pass can be used in both areas. A lift operation or a descent between the areas is still being planned. In addition to these two large ski areas, there is also the Tukino ski area, privately operated by the Desert Alpine Ski Club and the Aorangi Ski Club , in the southeast. It has two simple tow lifts and is 1.9 square kilometers in size.
Mount Ngauruhoe
Emerald Lakes
Mount Tongariro
Crater rim of the Red Crater
See also
Web links
- Tongariro National Park . Department of Conservation ,accessed May 9, 2020.
- Walks in and around Tongariro National Park . (PDF; 6.4 MB)Department of Conservation,accessed on May 9, 2020(English).
- The Open Earth Project (Engl.)
- Entry on the UNESCO World Heritage Center website ( English and French ).
Individual evidence
- ^ Tongariro National Park . Department of Conservation , accessed May 9, 2020 .
- ↑ Walks in and around Tongariro National Park . (PDF; 6.4 MB) Department of Conservation , accessed on May 9, 2020 (English).
- ^ Ian Brodie: The Lord of the Ring Location Guidebook . Harper Collins Publishers (New Zealand) Limited, 2nd edition 2002, ISBN 1-86950-491-7 .
Natural heritage: Te Wahipounamu (1990) | New Zealand's Sub-Antarctic Islands (1998)
Cultural / Natural Heritage: Tongariro National Park (1990)