Tanya first started to run when she was living in a destructive, abusive relationship. But she wasn’t allowed to run with other people and she wasn’t allowed to run on trails. Fast-forward to today and she’s living in Lake Hawea where she finds joy in adventures in the mountains almost every day.
In this episode we chat about her journey from running her first road marathon to competing in rugged 100 mile trail races and what other outdoor adventures it’s leading to. Tanya is an advocate for Shine and is committed to raising awareness around domestic violence and recovery for victims reclaiming their lives.
In this episode you’ll hear about…
- The joys of running & the NZ trail running community
- Tanya’s personal experiences with domestic violence
- Her evolving passion for the outdoors and new adventure goals she’s working towards
This episode is sponsored by Federated Mountain Clubs of New Zealand
Podcast music: Wild and Free by Hope Social Club and other pieces by Evan Phillips
Episode links
- Tanya’s personal website
- Tanya’s public Facebook page
- Tanya’s Instagram
- Wild Things FB page (awesome trail running community in NZ)
- Shine (making homes violence free in New Zealand)
- Are you Okay? (New Zealand family violence support site)
Episode sponsored by FMC
In New Zealand we’re lucky to have access to so many amazing areas to recreate in. But it’s not just luck. There’s a huge amount of advocacy work that goes on behind the scenes.
FMC has been advocating for these opportunities since it was formed in 1931.
Not long after the Crown Pastoral Land Act came into force in 1998, a number of farms began undergoing ‘tenure review’. The farmers got freehold of the best agricultural land, whilst the government essentially bought back high ridges, gorges and summits that we want to explore. A few years after Tenure review began, FMC and Forest and Bird saw the opportunity to get back more of Aoteroa for kiwis to recreate in. So they launched the “Six-pack of parks” campaign that called for six new conservation parks to be created in the rain-shadow of the Southern Alps.
By 2009, a total of 10 parks, (totalling more than 600,000 hectares) had been established, including 3 of the proposed ‘six pack’.
FMC continued to advocate for the remaining land to be protected within Conservation Parks, but even though DOC’s own conservation management strategies was to progress this plan, by 2017 the Remarkables was still designated as stewardship land: the lowest classification, with extremely low levels of protection. Such land could be mined or swapped by the government with relative ease.
So in 2017, FMC lit the fire again, and launched the Remarkables National Park campaign. This diverse area behind Queenstown is one of New Zealand’s only iconic mountain areas that currently lacks any legal protection. FMC thinks it is worthy of being a National Park, which would cover The Remarkables, the Tapuae-o-Uenuku/Hector Mountains, the Garvie Mountains, the Old Woman Range, the Kopuwai/Old Man Range and the upper Waikaia Valley.
It would be a park to celebrate the dry highlands of Otago and Southland. A highland national park for the next generation of highlanders.
Learn more about the interesting history of this campaign and how you can get involved by visiting fmc.org.nz/remarkables
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