New Zealand, The Final Numbers

New Zealand's roads are 7% more dangerous than US roads, and, in terms of violent crime, it is about as safe as Philadelphia.  Both, arguably, reflect negatively on New Zealand (Sorry fans of Philadelphia).  I will be the first to admit, that I am not a glass half full person.  Jason, perhaps, described my demeanor best when he said that I "thrive in negativity." Knowing this about myself, I acknowledge that I do often look for negatives.  I am good at finding what is wrong with a situation.  So, I wanted to find something that New Zealand was better at.  Unfortunately, every metric that I come across reflects poorly on New Zealand.  Though one analysis remains uncompleted, and if Edmund Hillary is correct, then New Zealand will trump the US in this aspect.

I will address Hillary's opinions towards the end, and instead begin with safety in the workplace.  I was recently nominated to the safety committee at work.  Without divulging any sensitive information, I was startled at some of the trends in the incidents, and was appointed to give a presentation about the importance of incident and near miss reporting.  One of the things I discovered while preparing this presentation was that New Zealand's workplaces are, well, shockingly dangerous when compared with US workplaces.  This might be related to the fact that construction workers work in trenches beneath heavy equipment without hard hats or safety glasses, or that scaffolding rarely has toe boards or railings.  It could also be the "New Zealand ingenuity," that makes Kiwis "make" things work.  Whatever it is, the safety comparison is best shown with a graph.

While that is not the most beautiful chart I have ever made, a given industry is in the same color, with US numbers presented with a black border.  In the categories of Total (all industries), Mining, and Construction, NZ workplaces have, approximately, three times the recordable incidents as US workplaces.  In Government, the categories are quite a bit different.  The US statistics include construction and healthcare (a surprisingly dangerous occupation), while NZ excludes these professions.  New Zealand does include "Defence" which sounds like it might be dangerous.  Either way, NZ government jobs are on par with the safety in the US, and everything else is more dangerous.  (Sources for US and NZ.)

While trying to think of another measure to return balance to the NZ side, I was listening to the radio when they reported on a recent paper in the Lancet.  Apparently, infectious disease rates are on the rise in New Zealand.  I might not have thought too much about this, but a Modern, Western nation should have a falling infectious disease rate, and a rising chronic disease rate.  I have not read the article in the Lancet, so I cannot verify either way, but it seems that there are two interesting parts to this.  First, that this is the first study of this kind.  I am not sure if this is the first study of this kind in New Zealand, or if it is the first anywhere.  I imagine it is the first in NZ, as this seems like the type of data that the CDC would tabulate annually.  That said, I have not been able to find these data on the CDC website (with only brief, late night searches).  Second, many sources allege that NZ is the only Modern, Western nation with this trend.  If this is true, one has to ask, does this preclude modernity?

The Edmund Hillary metric came from his autobiography, Nothing Venture, Nothing Win.  In his book, Hillary states that one of the things he did not like about the US was the lack of public land when compared to New Zealand.  This was incredible to me.  When I go to Delta, if I climb to a promontory, I can see public land in every direction I look.  In Socorro, the same was true.  Vegas was rimmed with public land, as the mountains rising out of the valley where the city resides are all public.  I have had similar experiences in Seattle, Phoenix, Tucson, Albuquerque, Santa Fe, and cities in California.  I have driven countless miles through public lands on interstates and back roads.  In New Zealand, or at least around Taupo, there is only one area that seems truly public that one can see from Taupo.  Part of this might be that the North Island is flat, so very little sticks above the horizon, but many of the forests are private (for logging), and most of the open country is private farms.  If Edmund Hillary was from a small town along the Western edge of the South Island, I might understand that Chicago would seem like it lacked public lands.  He wasn't.  Hillary is from near Auckland, where the public land situation seems similar to the Central North Island.  Maybe this has changed since 1975, but somehow I doubt that New Zealand's Great Enclosure occurred in the last forty years.  This seems like a fantastic numbers game, and a great test of how "outdoorsy" the country is.  Are Kiwis really adventurous?  Do they really value wilderness?  I think, contrary to what Hillary states, that public lands have never been that important to Kiwis, and that wilderness gets short shrift in this little island nation.

Obviously, in straight numbers the US dominates.  The US Forest service manages about 780,000 square kilometers of public land, or about 3 New Zealands.  Which, while highly unfair, it seems like Hillary could have found a little slice of nowhere somewhere in that vast stretch of forest.  To keep with the unfair numbers, 76% of Nevada is public land, of which 194,000 square kilometers are BLM land.  In the unit of New Zealands, Nevada has about 0.8 New Zealands managed by the BLM.  The US has about 435,000 square kilometers of Wilderness Area, about 1.6 New Zealands.  Nationwide, the BLM manages about 3.8 New Zealands, and the National Park Service manages 1.25 New Zealands.  These do not include lands managed by DOD (not always open to the public), Bureau of Reclamation, National Monuments (
Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument is 360,000 square kilometers of ocean, or 1.3 New Zealands), Department of Fish and Wildlife, state governments, or local governments.  Much of the Federal land falls under the auspices of the Department of Interior, which manages 2,050,000 square kilometers, or about 7.6 New Zealands!  Thus, the quantity of public land in the US is staggering, but to be fair, the US is a lot bigger than New Zealand.


The New Zealand Department of Conservation manages essentially all of the public land in New Zealand.  There are city parks, and some Maori trust land that is open to the public, but DOC is the big one.  DOC manages, according to Wikipedia, "almost a third of New Zealand's land area."  Rounding that up to one third, that is about 89,000 square kilometers.  In the US, about one third (on the order of 31%) of the land is administered by the BLM, Forest Service, National Park Service, Department of Fish and Wildlife, and the Army Corps of Engineers.  This does not include some land, like that managed by the Bureau of Reclamation, but it is surprisingly difficult to break out the land that is public, in the sense that it is open to people, and land owned by the federal government that would not be open to the public (e.g., military bases).  This problem exists in New Zealand as well.  While it is fairly easy to filter out military bases (I think), forestry land may be closed to the public, even though it is public lands.  While this does happen in the US as well, the scale seems larger here.  Regardless, with federal public lands, the US and New Zealand are neck and neck.  In the US, the states also control vast quantities of land.  I have not found a number for New Zealand, but it seems that district parks are often quite small.  It seems unlikely to me that New Zealand district councils hold 10% of the country, like the states do in the US.  Thus, it seems safe to say that public land in the US is closer to 40%, while it is closer to 33% in New Zealand.

If one sets out to prove Hillary correct, then perhaps total area of public land is not a good measure.  Maybe, percent of total land area is also not a good measure.  Maybe, the best measure would be public land per capita.  I think, in this measure, New Zealand has more public land than the US.  By my poorly thought out estimation, the US has about 79 people per square kilometer of public land (including state), while New Zealand has about 49 people per square kilometer of public land.  While I'm doubtful that this is what Hillary was talking about, it is a value worth noting.

However, it almost seems like a group of people who have to live in denser cities are giving up more, to preserve their public land.  It seems fair to argue that the people of Manhattan are giving up more than the people of Las Vegas.  Thus, in thinking about it, I might argue that New Yorkers value the knowledge of having public land more than the people of most Western States, and, accordingly, more than Kiwis.  Yet, to really delve into who values the wilderness more is a complex issue that does not really fit the scope of this post.  Yet, population density does seem to have an affect on an earlier item.  It seems, that infectious diseases would ravish places with high population densities more than those with low population density.  It seems that, if I am to concede that New Zealand has more public land on the grounds of population density, than it be only fair that New Zealand takes a double hit on the infectious disease front!

I may do another piece about New Zealand in, what looks to be, my last two months in this country.  I thought about covering debt, healthcare, and civil rights / racial tension.  I had thought about comparing New Zealand to Greece, as the country seems to have positioned itself for an economic meltdown.  Discussing the fact that while New Zealand does have public healthcare, the healthcare system still unfairly favors the rich (and is woefully behind other nations when it comes to things like hygiene and patient privacy).  Further, I thought about discussing the relationship between Europeans and Maori.  Yet, in reality, the last two are pretty convincingly covered by the paper published in the Lancet.  I may write these pieces, I may reflect on New Zealand after I have left.  Or, I may leave it.  Either way, my intention is that this will be the last piece about New Zealand when it comes to the numbers.

This is an impoverished little nation, with backwards policies, poor records on health and safety, and closed minded, arrogant people, which is okay.  For my money though, Hawaii is a nicer, safer tropical get away, and BC and Alaska have far superior mountains and coastlines.  New Zealand's splendor is something like Washington's Olympic Peninsula, it isn't that it is bad there, because it is pretty amazing, you just know there are better places.