Tours to watch the demise of NZ's glaciers

From Kevin Hester:

How is this for a positive feed back loop? "

“I guess you could say global warming is having a positive effect for Glacier Explorers,” Mr. Ward said the number of his annual customers had soared in the last six years, to 25,000 from 7,000, primarily because tourists want to see icebergs break off the glacier and fall into the lake."

How macabre!

People wanting to watch the demise of the glaciers brings more tourists who now can't walk to the glacier so must use a chopper burning high octane jet fuel and depositing exhaust soot on the glacier thus reducing the albido effect.

https://www.facebook.com/notes/kevin-hester/positive-feedback-loops-explained/10204216696510294

Mea Culpa. I have choppered to both of these glaciers and it would appear I am the last generation to have walked to them as well.

Pity this had to be covered by the NYT and not NZ media!

New Zealand Glaciers Ebb and Tour Guides Play Catch-Up

NY Times,

2 January, 2015

FOX GLACIER, New Zealand — This town of about 300 residents trades on its namesake: a giant slab of ice and snow a short drive from the main street. Guided glacier hiking began here in 1928 and is a main reason for the area’s popularity as a destination for international travelers.

But a local tour operator, Fox Glacier Guiding, has been unable to take tourists onto the ice on foot since April, when glacial retreat caused a river to change course, blocking access to a popular hiking trail. And at another glacier about 14 miles down the road, the operator Franz Josef Glacier Guides lost hiking access in 2012, also because of retreating ice.

Now, air landings by helicopter are the only way to set foot on the glaciers, which lie at the confluence of the Southern Alps and the Tasman Sea on the west coast of New Zealand’s South Island. As a result, both companies have made helicopter tours their primary product, increasing business for local helicopter operator.

Around the world, climate change is having uneven economic effects on tourism operators whose businesses depend on ice and snow.

It has, for example, hurt some ski areas while potentially benefiting competitors whose higher elevations make them less vulnerable to snowmelt, said Daniel Scott, a geographer at the University of Waterloo in Canada who studies links between climate change and tourism.

In Peru, if the rapidly shrinking Pastoruri Glacier disappears, tourists may take their business — typically about $15 per person for a glacier walk — to places where glacial ice is still accessible, said Carlos Ames of Aventura Quechua, a guide company in the mountain city of Huaraz. But in the short term, he added, Pastoruri’s retreat has created new jobs for horse- and mule-mounted guides, because some tourists think they cannot complete the lengthening, high-altitude glacier hike unassisted.

And in Greenland, glacier-oriented tourism is growing because visitors are eager to see the effects of climate change, said Malik Milfeldt, a senior tourism consultant for Visit Greenland, a government-financed promotional company. 

Revenue from tourist-friendly activities like dog sledding, ice carving and Nordic skiing have dropped as winter weather has grown more unpredictable.

“What benefits one hurts the other,” Mr. Milfeldt said.

In New Zealand, most of whose 4.4 million people live on two main islands, tourism directly accounted for 3.7 percent of gross domestic product in the year ending March 31, 2013, or $5.7 billion at today’s exchange rates, according to government data. A 2007 study prepared for Development West Coast, a nonprofit organization in the coastal town of Greymouth, estimated that glacier-related tourism on the South Island’s scenic west coast directly contributed at least $77 million a year to local economies.

Two of the glaciers there, Fox and Franz Josef, have advanced several times since they were first measured more than a century ago, scientific figures show. 

But both have retreated farther in the last five years than they advanced in the preceding 25 years, and scientists predict the retreat will continue over the long term.

A tour guide in New Zealand. Tourism directly accounted for 3.7 percent of gross domestic product in the year ending March 31, 2013.

Credit Guy Frederick for The New York Times

“There is no doubt that the retreat has been caused by climate change,” Brian Anderson, a glaciologist at Victoria University in the capital of Wellington who studies both glaciers, said in an email.

Since April, a hiking trail to Fox Glacier’s icy terminal face has stopped a few hundred feet short of its target, blocked by a small river and some rocks and boulders that the retreating ice left behind.

In a 2014 academic survey of tourism in New Zealand’s glacier region, about two-thirds of respondents said they would still travel to the Fox and Franz Josef area, even if the glaciers were accessible only by air. About one-fifth, however, said they would not be willing to pay for a helicopter flight to walk on them.

From a business perspective, that does not bother Bede Ward, the general manager of Glacier Explorers, which offers boat tours on a lake near the Tasman Glacier on the South Island. He said the number of his annual customers had soared in the last six years, to 25,000 from 7,000, primarily because tourists want to see icebergs break off the glacier and fall into the lake.

“I guess you could say global warming is having a positive effect for Glacier Explorers,” Mr. Ward said by email.

But at Franz Josef Glacier Guides, the number of staff members has dwindled to 35 from 60 since 2012, the year that walking access was cut off, according to Craig Buckland, the company’s operations manager. Rob Jewell, the chief executive of Fox Glacier Guiding, said the loss of hiking access since April had taken a “significant” toll on business.

Rob Jewell, the chief executive of Fox Glacier Guiding, said the loss of hiking access since April had taken a “significant” toll on business. Credit - Guy Frederick for The New York Times

Both companies have embraced helicopter tourism in hopes of making up revenue that guided hikes once provided.

Noise from glacier-bound helicopters could annoy some tourists, said Wayne Costello, an official with the Conservation Department in the town of Franz Josef. 

But he said tour guides could also use glacial retreat as a “touchstone” for teaching tourists about climate change.

“It’s a really important chance for us to connect with people and say, ‘Actually, if you value your environment, this is what’s happening in the world, and these are the impacts of humans living on the planet,’” Mr. Costello said at his home.

On a recent morning, tourists from several countries gathered at a helipad in Fox Glacier before a half-day trek on the glacier.

Smitha Murthy and Keerthy Prasad, software engineers from Bangalore, India, were exploring Fox Glacier as part of their 11-day New Zealand honeymoon.

After a short ride in a bright red helicopter, they were walking, wide-eyed, through a canyon with 25-foot ice walls, the newlyweds recalled after their tour.

Mr. Prasad, 29, said he had planned the tour with help from a Bangalore travel agent. At over $300 per person, it was more than double what the couple had paid to bungee-jump elsewhere in New Zealand.

But Mr. Prasad and Ms. Murthy, 24, had no regrets about the price.

“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience,” Mr. Prasad said. “It’s probably not worth the money to do it again. But the first time, it’s really worth it.”