A New Zealand law allowing people to poo in public — so long as they do not think they are being watched — must be tightened, says a freedom camping association, amid long-running allegations that campers are to blame for much of the human waste in the natural environment.
It is currently an offense to defecate or urinate in a public place — other than in a public lavatory — but if the person can show they had reasonable grounds for believing they were not being observed, they could escape a NZ$200 (US$125) fine.
The Responsible Campers Association said the law should also require people to show they conducted their business at least 50 meters from a waterway, and the waste is buried to at least 15cm.
“It is not so much the action which creates concern, but the visible after-effects,” group spokesman Bob Osborne said.
The group started in 2017 to advocate for freedom campers — people who stay free of charge on public lands — on the basis that the mode of camping should not be targeted, but rather the behavior of campers.
Freedom camping has hit the country’s headlines in recent years over concerns about its effects on the environment, especially when it comes to campers’ personal waste.
Reports regularly crop up in local media linking freedom campers to increases in excrement and toilet paper littering at popular tourist destinations, while some local councils have opted to ban campers from hotspots altogether.
Frictions between campers, locals and the government peaked in late 2020, when New Zealand Minister of Tourism Stuart Nash told national broadcaster RNZ that freedom campers in non-self-contained vehicles “pull over to the side of the road and ... shit in our waterways.”
However, Osborne said it is unfair to blame freedom campers for the country’s public poo problems.
“There is no evidence linking any specific group to this undesirable practice, which affects travelers every day all over New Zealand,” he said.
The group said that more toilet facilities for travelers would be the best long-term solution.
Freedom camping reached its peak in 2019, just before the country shut its borders during the COVID-19 pandemic. Government data recorded roughly 245,000 freedom campers that year, and of those, 91,000 were New Zealand residents.
Nash said last year that the government would crack down on freedom camping, including harsher fines for those behaving badly, and tougher restrictions on where campers can park.
The rules are to be introduced in parliament this year, in time for what could be the country’s busiest summer season in more than two years, with the borders fully reopening to tourists.
The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is constructing a new counter-stealth radar system on a disputed reef in the South China Sea that would significantly expand its surveillance capabilities in the region, satellite imagery suggests. Analysis by London-based think tank Chatham House suggests China is upgrading its outpost on Triton Island (Jhongjian Island, 中建島) on the southwest corner of the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島), building what might be a launching point for an anti-ship missile battery and sophisticated radar system. “By constraining the US ability to operate stealth aircraft, and threaten stealth aircraft, these capabilities in the South China Sea send
HAVANA: Repeated blackouts have left residents of the Cuban capital concerned about food, water supply and the nation’s future, but so far, there have been few protests Maria Elena Cardenas, 76, lives in a municipal shelter on Amargura Street in Havana’s colonial old town. The building has an elegant past, but for the last few days Maria has been cooking with sticks she had found on the street. “You know, we Cubans manage the best we can,” she said. She lives in the shelter because her home collapsed, a regular occurrence in the poorest, oldest parts of the beautiful city. Cuba’s government has spent the last days attempting to get the island’s national grid functioning after repeated island-wide blackouts. Without power, sleep becomes difficult in the heat, food
U-TURN? Trami was moving northwest toward Vietnam yesterday, but high-pressure winds and other factors could force it to turn back toward the Philippines Tropical Storm Trami blew away from the northwestern Philippines yesterday, leaving at least 65 people dead in landslides and extensive flooding that forced authorities to scramble for more rescue boats to save thousands of terrified people, who were trapped, some on their roofs. However, the onslaught might not be over: State forecasters raised the rare possibility that the storm — the 11th and one of the deadliest to hit the Philippines this year — could make a U-turn next week as it is pushed back by high-pressure winds in the South China Sea. A Philippine provincial police chief yesterday said that 33
PROPAGANDA: The leaflets attacked the South Korean president and first lady with phrases such as: ‘It’s fortunate that President Yoon and his wife have no children’ North Korean propaganda leaflets apparently carried by balloons were found scattered on the streets of the South Korean capital, Seoul, yesterday, including some making personal attacks on the country’s president and first lady. The leaflets attacking South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol and first lady Kim Keon-hee found in the capital appear to be the first instance of the North Korean government directly sending anti-South propaganda material across the border. They included graphic messages accusing the Yoon government of failures that had left his people living in despair, and describing the first couple as immoral and mentally unstable. The leaflets included photographs of the
RSS