Dozens of DOC huts and shelters across the country are ‘high-risk structures’ overdue for maintenance. The cost of the maintenance backlog on DOC’s network of huts and tracks is said to be $300 million. The figures were released to Newsroom under the Official Information Act, and stated the department is 70,000 hours behind on scheduled repairs. Wilderness spoke with Federated Mountain Clubs (FMC) vice-president Allan Brent, who said FMC is exploring solutions with DOC to tackle the backlog.

What was your initial reaction to the work backlog?

Like FMC, Wilderness readers might be wondering if we could see tens or hundreds of backcountry huts being demolished, bridges removed and tracks left to grow over.

But before anyone starts throwing stones, FMC wants to keep it constructive. In the past with DOC and as a community, we’ve sometimes chosen, wrongly, to be antagonistic, and this has not helped to foster open and honest conversation. That’s why on huts and tracks, FMC is committed to working in partnership with DOC and others in our community.

What’s the next step then?

We’ve been here before – in 2002 DOC had a similar funding situation and got through without loss of huts. There are lots of dimensions to hut and track funding. There is the way that arcane details of accounting standards are applied.

Then there are issues of disposition, like whether our community can accept that DOC may not be able to afford all of its huts. If that is DOC’s honest view, and is roughly fair, it wouldn’t be helpful to insist that ‘DOC should do its job’ and maintain the current network by itself. The quality of the community’s input – and the possible solutions we could offer – will be directly related to how honest DOC is prepared to be. For example, if there are 200 huts that won’t fit in the budget, we need to know so we can help to work out what to do.

What kind of solutions are envisioned?

There’s the possibility for different asset treatments; tweaked treatments of maintenance; a new ‘hut standard’ including minimal maintenance for backcountry huts in  good condition; maintenance of huts by local volunteers, much in the way many club huts run currently. In a world-class system, such ‘policy settings’ would serve huts and tracks. Now, it seems to be the other way around. Working together, we can get back to that world-class system. FMC looks forward to working with DOC and the community to that end.