Westland Tai Poutini

Westland Tai Poutini National Park was established in 1960 on the west coast of New Zealand's South Island and protects some 1,175 km² running down from the divide of the Southern Alps to the Tasman Sea.

Its most notable feature is that compression: in little more than twenty kilometres the ground passes from snow-covered summits and icefields to the coast. The Franz Josef and Fox glaciers are the most spectacular expression of that gradient, because they descend to around three hundred metres above sea level and end a short distance from a temperate rainforest of tree ferns and podocarps, a juxtaposition of ice and forest that exists in very few places on the planet. The cause is the enormous rainfall on the western slope, which feeds the glaciers at a rate able to offset melting at low altitude. Both glaciers have been in accelerating retreat since the start of this century.

The park also includes the Okarito lagoon, a coastal wetland that is the habitat of the Okarito kiwi, the most threatened kiwi species, with a population numbering a few hundred individuals, and New Zealand's only white heron breeding colony. Westland Tai Poutini is one of the four parks that make up the Te Wahipounamu World Heritage property.