Arthur's Pass

Arthur's Pass National Park was established in 1929 in the centre of New Zealand's South Island and protects some 1,144 km² on both sides of the main divide of the Southern Alps. It was the first national park on the South Island and the third in the country.

Its defining feature is the contrast between slopes. The western side receives the moisture off the Tasman Sea and is covered in dense temperate rainforest, with rainfall exceeding five thousand millimetres a year; the eastern side, in the lee, is far drier and dominated by southern beech forest and tussock grassland. That change takes place within a few kilometres, on either side of the pass.

Arthur's Pass, at about 920 metres, is a historic route: Māori used it to carry pounamu from the west coast, and in the nineteenth century a road and later the TranzAlpine railway line were built through it, which still crosses the park. Its best-known animal is the kea, the alpine parrot endemic to New Zealand, famous for its curiosity and its habit of dismantling parked vehicles; its population is in decline and is the subject of specific conservation programmes.