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After so much work by so many people at a national and local level it was great to finally get the Milford Opportunities vision out there. There were moments during the official unveiling of the plan in Te Anau this week that brought home to everyone present the importance of managing and protecting this magnificent jewel in our crown so that future generations can enjoy it. You could have heard a pin drop in the room when Muriel Johnstone from the Ōraka Aparima runanga talked about what the proposals mean for Milford. And it was satisfying to hear Michael Skerrett from Ngāi Tahu confirming that the four years of work done to get to this point had been truly collaborative from the perspective of local iwi.
Visitor numbers peaked in 2019 with 870,000 visitors through Milford Sound, up from 430,000 in 2013 – which most agreed were simply unsustainable. “While Covid set back the numbers, we expect them to return because it is a rare opportunity to visit true wilderness,” Turner said. He stressed that the masterplan was a concept subject to detailed designs, business cases, and government approval, and that it would likely be four to five years before any of the ideas were realised. Complex conversations and negotiations with commercial operators lay ahead as the project moved into its implementation phase, he said. The decision to remove the airstrip was based on four factors, Turner said: the instability of the land under it, the cost of maintaining it, the fact that it took up a third of the flat land in Milford Sound, and that it blocked some of the best views of Mitre Peak.