Nelson Lakes National Park

Nelson Lakes National Park (established in 1956) protects 102,000 hectares of the northern most Southern Alps. The park offers tranquil beech forest, craggy mountains, clear streams and lakes both big and small.

The Rotoiti Nature Recovery Project aims to restore approximately 5000 hectares of this beech forest on the shores of Lake Rotoiti. Take one of the many walks through the project and you'll see and hear the results of this work; a forest alive with the sights and sounds of birds.

Landform - During the last Ice Age massive glaciers gouged out troughs in the mountainous headwaters of the Buller River.

Today these troughs are filled by Lakes Rotoiti and Rotoroa, which give the park its name. They are the largest lakes in the area.

The mountains have been thrust up by continental collision along the Alpine Fault which crosses the track in places between Sabine Hut and Lake Rotoiti. Extensive glaciation, erosion and weathering have left a characteristic landscape of steep valley sides, scree slopes, sharp ‘arete’ ridges and many tarn-filled basins.

The forested valleys once cradled glaciers which excavated the hollows now filled by the waters of Rotoiti and Rotoroa.