Backcountry New Zealand Tramping Walking and Hiking Track Photos of exceptional spectacular scenery in backcountry hiking trails of New Zealand. New Zealand has had a long tradition of access to outdoor recreation, to a largely undeveloped back country and to extensive areas of uncrowded natural environments; outdoor recreational land is plentiful by most countries' standards. Substantial areas of largely unmodified country are vested in the Crown as public lands, in the form of National Parks, Forest Parks and a variety of other Reserves, a Conservation Estate that is almost completely uninhabited. The first National Park was established in 1887 and very large areas of largely unmodified country continue to be added to the system. The latest National Park, Kahurangi, in the north west of the South Island, is the country's second largest, and was opened in 1996.