A fund manager would have been fired years ago
The Department of Conservation manages land worth $134 billion and generates ecosystem services valued at $10.9 billion annually. Tourism on that land produces $5.3 billion a year. Yet DOC’s total revenue from concessions and fees sits at a miserable $50-60 million. That is a yield so low it would embarrass a savings account.
The Conservation Amendment Bill, lodged today and described by Conservation Minister Tama Potaka as “the most significant reform of conservation legislation in nearly 40 years”, finally addresses the absurdity. The core proposition is simple: conservation land can be both protected and productive, and the system that manages access to it should not take half a decade to process a form.
Six years for a permit is not caution, it is dysfunction
Some concessions were taking five to six years to process. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon described the regime as “totally broken, often taking years to obtain or renew, and leaving businesses in a cycle of bureaucratic limbo”. Approximately 80% of DOC planning documents were overdue for review, some by more than 15 years.
The Bill’s fix is structural. Up to 30-40% of applications will no longer require individual processing, replaced by standardised pre-approvals or an online portal. Statutory timeframes will force DOC to make decisions within set periods. Concession terms will match the useful life of fixed assets, giving operators the certainty needed to justify capital investment.
Potaka said the government had already halved the concessions backlog in six months before the Bill was even introduced. Tourism Industry Aotearoa CEO Rebecca Ingram said in late 2024 that the concession system had been “broken for some time” and called for a process that is “clearer, faster, and more flexible.”
Foreign visitors will pay their way at four marquee sites
The Bill embeds a $20-40 charge for international visitors at Cathedral Cove, Tongariro Crossing, Milford Sound/Track, and Aoraki Mount Cook. New Zealanders are exempt. Foreign visitors account for 80% of traffic at these sites, and the charge is expected to raise around $60 million a year, reinvested directly into those locations.
That $60 million effectively doubles DOC’s current commercial income. It sits on top of the existing $35 International Visitor Conservation and Tourism Levy, which collected $62.5 million in the year to June 2024. In 2025, Ruapehu District Mayor Weston Kirton welcomed the charges but stressed revenue must flow based on visitor volume: “The rubbish they leave behind is a taxation on the local people.”
The opposition is predictable but not entirely wrong
Forest & Bird CEO Nicola Toki called the Bill “the most significant weakening of conservation law in a generation”. In 2025, Lincoln University associate professor Stephen Espiner warned that a revenue-focused model risks starving less-visited but ecologically important sites: “For every iconic destination like Aoraki-Mount Cook, there are scores of less well-known sites with important conservation values that may miss out because they don’t generate revenue.”
The concern has merit. But the Bill explicitly protects approximately 40% of conservation land from exchange or disposal, including national parks, nature reserves, wilderness areas, and World Heritage sites. The framing as wholesale privatisation does not survive contact with the legislation.
What this means for the 1,600 businesses on the ground
The immediate winners are tourism operators who have spent years waiting for permits. Statutory timeframes and pre-approvals are worth more to them than the visitor charge debate. The longer-term question is whether faster concessions unlock genuinely new commercial activity, eco-lodges, guided experiences, bespoke infrastructure, or simply reduce friction for existing operators.
If the government is serious about conservation land generating returns proportionate to its value, $60 million from visitor charges is a rounding error on a $134 billion asset base. The real growth story depends on whether streamlined access attracts private capital willing to build on conservation land at scale. That is the bet, and it will take years to know whether it pays off.
Sources
- ‘Wave’ of Conservation Act concessions, foreign visitor charge for high-volume DOC sites (2025-08-02)
- Forest & Bird slams reform as ‘conservation retreat’, but minister defends economic push (2025-08-03)
- Govt announces foreign visitor charges at popular DOC sites (2025-08-02)
- Assessing the value of public conservation land (2024)
- Factsheet – Modernising conservation land management (2024)
- TIA Keen To See Tourism And Conservation Modernised (2024-11-01)
- Perspectives: Why charging entry fees at iconic NZ natural attractions could have hidden costs (2025-08-29)