Remarkables Station is a nine-hundred-hectare farm located at the foot of the Remarkables Range near Queenstown, on the edge of Lake Wakatipu. It is currently leased as a working deer, beef and sheep farm. The station has been in the ownership of the Jardine family for almost 100 years.   

In 2020 Dick and Jillian Jardine announced their intention to gift Remarkables Station to the QEII National Trust to be held in perpetuity. QEII will take over the property in 2022 and we are currently planning for our future role as custodian and manager of the station. As part of this process, we have commissioned Abacus Bio and e3Scientific to prepare a long-term strategic plan for Remarkables Station. The strategic plan will articulate a vision, long term objectives, guiding principles and actions for the management and conservation of Remarkables Station to 2050.     

Future Planning: Values, Opportunities and Constraints  

As the caretaker of Remarkables Station in perpetuity, we have a unique opportunity to develop the station as a best practice model of integrated land use incorporating pastoral farming, conservation, landscape protection and community access and recreation. In enabling these uses, we will aim to achieve four key goals:   

• Protect and enhance the environmental, biodiversity, landscape, cultural and archaeological values of Remarkables Station;  
• Enable individuals and groups to engage with the station in a way that contributes to community wellbeing, protects and augments the station’s values and does not negatively impact on pastoral farming activity;  
• Ensure the station is financially self-sustaining;  
• Demonstrate best practice pastoral farming practices.  

Delivering these outcomes will mean managing the property to ensure that different land uses are complimentary and will not undermine or adversely impact on each other. To achieve this, parts of the property could be identified within the Strategic Plan as suitable for public access, conservation, recreation, education or appropriate commercial activity, while other parts of the station will likely be retained as a working farm and will not be accessible to the public.    

Meeting our long term goals for Remarkables Station will also require a robust understanding of any known or potential environmental, landscape, heritage, cultural, recreation, agricultural or built form values of Remarkables Station that could be important to understand, protect or enhance in the future. Part of the strategic planning process involves identifying these values through desktop and onsite analysis as well as community engagement.