Monitoring Safety Incidents

We closely monitor the overall impact of our prevention work on land-based outdoor recreation safety incidents through a range of mechanisms and metrics. One of these is through tracking the annual trends of participation, fatalities, search and rescue operations, and injuries.

Combined, these insights provide a comprehensive overview of the number and nature of safety incidents. This effectively highlights the national success of our prevention work, while identifying areas where there is the need for increased, targeted investment. Our aim is to reduce fatalities, search and rescue operations, and serious injuries. We measure these categories based on 5- and 10-year trends, and the rate of incidents relative to participation volumes (where available) for selected activities.

Fatalities

The data shows the number of fatalities across the seven activities has fluctuated over the years. However, over the past 15 years, the trend is decreasing overall.

Moreover, this year, the 5-year average has decreased from 7.6 to 6.6 fatalities per year. The 10-year average is down to 10.4 fatalities per year, a decrease from 11.1 in the previous year.

We do not include fatalities caused by medical events, such as heart attacks.

Search and Rescues

The number of people involved in search and rescues in the combined seven activities has slightly increased over the last 10 years, while the 5-year and 10-year averages are close at 699 and 716 people respectively per year.

Factors we believe that are contributing to this increasing trend include New Zealand's growing population, especially in urban environments, an increase in adult participation in many of these activities, and the increased availability and use of backcountry communication devices, such as distress beacons and satellite messenger capable devices, enabling people to more readily call for help.

From 2020-2021 onwards, we have included New Zealand ambulance data from Hato Hone St John, adding a type of ‘rescue’ event not included in previous data. This will have a slight impact on the data and trend.

Overall, we have not seen a significant increase in the number of people involved in search and rescue operations, despite these contributing factors. This reflects positively on our ongoing prevention efforts and safety initiatives.

Note: The data collection system changed in 2018-19 and this may have resulted in some underreporting for this specific year.

Injuries

Injury claims reported via ACC provide a much broader view of outdoor safety incidents than fatalities and search and rescues, allowing us to understand the wide range of incidents that lead to people getting hurt. While fatalities provide a greater level of detail, the value of injury claims is the significantly larger dataset, which captures a wide range of injury types and severities.

When looking closely at injury claims, tramping, hunting and mountaineering provide the cleanest datasets. We have combined these three activities to provide a big picture view of injury claim trends. This shows that over the past 10 years there has been an increase in total injury claims, including severe injuries.

There are likely multiple factors contributing to this increasing trend, such as an increase in the New Zealand population and in the size of the New Zealand adult tramping and mountaineering populations (hunting, on the other hand, is decreasing). We also know that the economic climate has variable impacts on the way people make ACC claims.

Due to these factors, we expect to see a further increase in injury claims over time. However, the relative injury rate compared to participation growth is increasing faster than these factors would indicate.

This trend suggests other factors are at play and highlights the need for increased targeted injury prevention investment for these activities, enabling us to focus specifically on reducing serious injuries involving these user groups.

While we monitor a range of metrics relating to injury claims we pay particular attention to severe injury claims, specifically the percentage of severe injuries compared to all injuries. Severe injuries reflect the most harmful injuries, requiring longer rehabilitation, and having a greater impact on individuals and their families. Severe injuries result in more time off work, with wider economic and community impacts.

Note: We are still within the 2024-25 data collection period, so this data is not yet complete. While the number of injuries will remain approximately the same, the cost of ongoing injury claims will increase over time. That means the number of severe injuries could change because the cost of an injury is a key factor in how we categorise claims.