French Tourist Vincent Piton is travelling along the Te Araroa Trail and is creating a free "treasure map" of edible foods and medicinal plants.

New Zealand has long been seen as the land of milk and honey by visiting tourists: and now many intrepid hunter-gatherers are taking advantage of the country's plentiful lakes and orchards to travel on the cheap.

These foraging foreigners often rely solely on free food – taken legally – to get by while touring the country.

While councils up and down the country move to tackle problems caused by freedom camping, questions are being raise as to whether low-income Kiwis should get first dibs at freebies.

SUPPLIED German tourist Tobias HIuchnik and his girlfriend Imke Liebau are in New Zealand on a working holiday visa for a year. They supplement their diet with oranges and avocados picked from public trees, affordable produce purchased from local stalls and shellfish and fish they catch.

German tourist Tobias HIuchnik and his girlfriend Imke Liebau are in New Zealand on a working holiday visa for a year. They supplement their diet with fish they catch, and oranges and avocados picked from public trees.

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"I occasionally collect mussels from the beach, like tuatua, pipis, cockles or green mussels. They're endemic to New Zealand and taste great. There are also plenty of spots to catch good fish, too.

STACY SQUIRES/STUFF University of Canterbury sustainability adviser Matt Morris says foraging is an international phenomenon and should be welcomed.

"We have previously found public avocado and orange trees and picked some fruit but that's very rare."

Across the country foraging maps, like Google's Fruit and Food Share Map, show fruit and nut trees, vegetable and community gardens, kai moana and herbs and our tourists are embracing them. According to Google Trends search interest in the map was the highest ever in November 2017 and New Zealand has the highest search interest for 'urban foraging' of any country in the past five years.

French tourist Vincent Piton, 32, is in New Zealand for the second time travelling the country along the 3000km Te Araroa Trail, and is creating a free "treasure map" called Te Araroa 2017 Eat The Road Project where he identifies edible foods and medicinal plants for anyone to use.

"I don't want people to go in a place and harvest the plants. This is about supporting the place and identifying the plants."

While he hasn't travelled in the South Island yet, in the North Island he harnessed fern fiddleheads, kawakawa leaves, karamu berries, flax flower nectar, kelp, sea lettuce and mushrooms. He also enjoyed horopito, "a very powerful native wild pepper".

It's not just foreigners who are foraging. New Zealander Ebony Moore has travelled across the country for the last two years and in 2017 she managed to avoid shopping at supermarkets. Instead, she foraged for fruit and berries, accessed community gardens, small town maraes and road stalls, she said.

"I've survived. But I also know a lot of people around New Zealand who have gardens. If I was a foreigner it might be a bit harder."

She said while she knew about what sort of foods could be eaten from the wild or gardens a lot of people she encountered weren't as sure, and while she had considered doing a foraging education course they were quite expensive which is where Google's New Zealand Fruit and Food Share Map came in handy.

However, some New Zealanders fear backpackers will plunder resources at the cost of New Zealanders living in poverty, who rely on foraging to survive.

Former Milford track guide Daniel Ford said it was important to protect New Zealand's natural food sources.

"There are thousands of New Zealanders now living in poverty who rely on foraging to survive. We don't want thousands of backpackers plundering these finite and limited resources.

"I don't want to see our plant life torn to pieces for free foreign backpacker food. We need to preserve what we have."

But University of Canterbury sustainability adviser Matt Morris said foraging was not a New Zealand specific phenomenon, it was international and should be welcomed.

"The ability to forage some areas for food and fibre seems to me to be a basic human right. Where we find competition for a small resource, I think that supports the argument to expand the resource. Welcoming travellers, and showing some hospitality in this way should be encouraged, not discouraged, in my view," he said.

In the meantime, Tourism Minister Kelvin Davis has invited 22 mayors to a meeting in March to discuss the situation with freedom camping.

There has been a number of complaints about noise, litter, human waste, overcrowding, and blocked access to public spaces caused by people camping out on sites without proper facilities. This led to freedom camping being temporarily banned at Waiwhakaiho River mouth in Taranaki this week.

Davis said he also wanted to take a broader look at freedom camping because, over the last decade, the number of international visitors doing at least some freedom camping during their stay had risen from about 30,000 to 115,000 annually.

"For tourism to continue growing in New Zealand and remain successful over the longer term, we need to listen to our communities and get this right."

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