Kahurangi National Park is on track to becoming the country’s largest dark sky sanctuary, which would protect 4,520 square kilometres within its boundary from future light pollution.
Sean Walker is a Top of the South Dark Sky committee member who is pushing for the sanctuary mainly for ecological reasons and hopes that it will ultimately expand to include all conservation land in the region.
Beyond that, he says it is possible for New Zealand to join Niue to become the first dark sky countries in the world. That would need to be approved internationally and would require an agreement to eliminate future upward light.
It’s part of a growing awareness of the importance of dark skies and the impact of light pollution, he says. Plus, those photons, or tiny particles of light from everything we use for lighting, don’t disappear but remain in space.
New Zealand already has several dark sky areas, including the Aoraki Mackenzie International Dark Sky Reserve around Tekapo, which covers 4,367 square kilometres. Sean says Kahurangi would become the most biologically diverse dark sky area in the country and, as a sanctuary, it would have the highest dark sky status. The only artificial lighting in the park comes from the huts and two lighthouses, which he says is negligible. “I believe it’s worth fighting to preserve it while it still is an option. Light is pollution and one of the pollutants we don’t think about.
“We’ve definitely overlooked the importance of darkness for some species. It’s security for the biodiversity because over half of the creatures in the world are nocturnal – mostly insects. We can protect the biodiversity of the park into the future knowing we won’t have increasing light levels around the park.”
Sean says people don’t think carefully about lighting and the effect it has, but even something as common as streetlights can change flowering cycles in plants. This then affects their seed programme and ultimately the creatures depending upon those seeds and plants.
People are also vulnerable to light pollution and he says too much light weakens our eyesight.
“Light affects how long it takes our eyes to adjust to darkness. The more light you put around, especially older people, the more they become night blind permanently.
“The night sky is one of the only things that hasn’t changed since cave men days. What we see is the same sky our ancestors saw. It’s the one thing that can make you feel very small in the scale of things.”
At this stage, the group is getting night sky readings within the park to make sure it qualifies as a dark sky sanctuary, as well as getting written letters of approval from the Department of Conservation, iwi and some councils.
An application will then be sent to Dark Sky International and, all going well, Sean says it could become a dark sky sanctuary within a few months. He hopes Farewell Spit and the Department of Conservation’s farm park will be included in the Kahurangi Dark Sky Sanctuary.
