Grab your hiking boots - Lake Waikaremoana will reopen to visitors next month.
Te Urewera was shut back in August when Delta arrived and the country went into level 4.
Tūhoe, the iwi and kaitiaki of the area, said Crown under-resourcing had made the Lake Waikaremoana track unsafe.
Access to the lake is reopening on Waitangi Day, and the Great Walk will reopen in two weeks.
Te Urewera Board Chair Tāmati Kruger told Checkpoint funding needs to be boosted back to “at least” the level it was before the Tūhoe settlement when the area used to be a national park.
Tūhoe receives about $2.5 million a year from the Crown for resources. When it was a national park Kruger said funding to DOC was at least $7 million.
“I think at least that… You can’t really justify a downgrading of resourcing over the last seven years in any way. In anything I think it should have been at that level.
“We hope [Waikaremoana] is going to be the greatest walk … we know that we've inherited the great walk from [DOC]. We really want that to be one of the things that we review and we think we can do some improvements.”
