Oparara Basin

The Oparara Basin is a basin drained by the Oparara River at 20 kilometres (12 mi) north of Karamea, at the West Coast Region of the South Island of New Zealand. With its large natural rock arches, a network of caves rich in fossils, and a beautiful, unspoiled natural environment typical of temperate rainforests, it is one of the most striking places of the Kahurangi National Park. The Oparara Basin is also famous for its unique remains in paleozoology and for being the sole habitat of several plant and animal species.

With its natural environment relatively closed and isolated, the Oparara Basin has long been protected from human influence. However, the locations of natural rock arches have been indicated in maps as early as from the 1880s.

Logging of native timber in the area started in the late 19th century, with the building of the McCallum's sawmill. As the logging areas progressed to be further away from the sawmill, it became necessary to build an access road into the rugged environment. Eventually, maintenance costs and extensions of this road escalated, and after changes of ownership and a belated attempt at reforestation, the sawmill went bankrupt. Selective logging continued in the forest until it was banned in 2002.

At the time of the bankruptcy, a major campaign was launched to ensure the protection and enhancement of the basin, as well as road maintenance, culminating in the founding of the Oparara Valley Project Trust and the purchase of the area on 1 October 2004.

Miners and deer hunters have often reported spectacular rock formations in the Honeycomb Hill area, but it was not until an exploration of the Buller Caving Group in the 1980s that an inventory of the 70 entrances to 13 km of galleries located in the Honeycomb Hill Cave system was compiled. These explorations revealed the scientific significance of the cave system by discovering the largest collection of bird fossils ever found in New Zealand.

A six-year project to complete a 30 km network of walkways and mountain biking tracks was completed in 2009, opening up more of the Oparara Basin to tourists who would have originally only visited the Heaphy Track.

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Wikipedia