Giant Wapiti – Te Anau

Te Anau, Southland, New Zealand

Animals and creatures

✓

Current

Checked by Project Big Things · Aug 2026

This Big Thing is recorded as still being here.

A large fibreglass Fiordland wapiti bull standing outside Te Anau’s community centre.

Private to your Passport.

PLAN YOUR VISIT

Recommended arrival available

Other

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Giant Wapiti – Te Anau

This pin marks the Big Thing itself. If stopping, choose a safe and legal place nearby.

Site-level location · 45.4162° S, 167.7180° E

FIELD GUIDE

The story

The wapiti outside the Te Anau community centre is a replica of a particular animal, shot in Fiordland in 1932.

That specificity is the whole point. Wapiti – North American elk – were released in Fiordland in 1905, a gift from President Theodore Roosevelt, and the herd that established itself in that country became something close to legendary among New Zealand hunters. Fiordland wapiti are hunted by ballot, in extraordinarily difficult terrain, and a good bull is the trophy of a lifetime. Replicating one particular 1932 animal at large scale is a hunter's monument, not a generic deer.

It also records a piece of ecological history that is no longer straightforward. The wapiti herd is an introduced population in a national park, valued intensely by one group of New Zealanders and regarded as a browsing pest by another, and its management has been argued over for decades. The statue predates none of that; it simply stands for the animal.

The siting is deliberately civic. It stands outside Te Anau's community centre on Luxmore Drive rather than at a hunting business, and Great South lists it among Southland's Big Things – so the town, not a shop, is making the claim.

Te Anau is the gateway to Fiordland, and most people arriving are there for Milford Sound or the Great Walks. The wapiti is a reminder that the same mountains have another set of visitors entirely, who come with a rifle and a ballot permit.

On the year it went up or the builder, the record is silent.

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PRACTICAL

Plan your stop

WHAT TO EXPECT

The Giant Wapiti is a large fibreglass replica of a Fiordland wapiti bull, standing outside Te Anau's community centre at 20/22 Luxmore Drive. It is listed by Great South as one of Southland's Big Things.

ACCESS

Public town-centre/community-centre setting at 20/22 Luxmore Drive. Use normal community-centre/town parking; exact recommended bay and exact position can be refined separately.

COMMUNITY

Visitor Log

WHAT'S NEXT

Find another Big Thing nearby

A large colourful takahē statue near Te Anau’s lakefront and town centre.

Roadside giants

0.5 km away

✓ Recommended arrival recorded

TRANSPARENCY

Sources & research

Southland NZ – Giant Wapiti Statue

Great South · recorded 2026-08-23

Current official regional tourism listing confirms the statue at 20/22 Luxmore Drive.

Tourism

What we're still checking

Open-licence image search completed 24 August 2026. No defensible reusable image with file-level commercial-use provenance was verified in the completed Commons, government/open-licence and archival/open-collection sweep.

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