Fiordland National Park

FIORDLAND NATIONAL PARK ACTIVITIES AND TRAVEL | Fiordland National Park Information

Fiordland National Park is in the far south-western corner of the South Island, New Zealand. The township of Te Anau is considered the gateway to the park. It is the heart of Te Wahipounamu - South West New Zealand World Heritage Area.

Fiordland National Park is full of snow-capped mountains, rivers of ice, deep lakes, unbroken forests and tussock grasslands.. Some of the best examples of animals and plants, which were once found on the ancient super-continent of Gondwana, still exist here.

The seaward edge of Fiordland National Park is a series of fourteen massive knife cuts, carved by the glaciers during successive ice ages. On all sides of the fiords, spectacular waterfalls tumble continually as the region's plentiful rainfall finds its way to the sea.

The remaining two thirds of Fiordland National Park are covered by virgin beech and podocarp forest. A 500 kilometre network of walking tracks allows visitors to explore the beautiful area.

Fiordland National Park History

Fiordland National Park was established in 1952. The fourteen fiords that fringe the southwest corner of the South Island were 100,000 years in the making, with the final details added during the most recent ice age just 10,000 years ago. The Maori attributed the creation of the fiords to a giant stonemason called Tute Rakiwhanoa, who hued out the steep sided valleys with his adzes.

In 1990 Fiordland was listed as a United Nations World Heritage site and given the name Te Wahipounamu - 'the place of greenstone', after the area's most treasured mineral resource.

Main Towns in the Fiordland Region

Other Towns in the Fiordland Region