but still belongs to the Southland Region. Tourism organisations and the Department of Conservation use this definition of the Fiordland region. New Zealanders generally regard the towns of Te Anau and Manapouri as part of the Fiordland region, even though they lie outside of the boundary of the national park. Geography In geographical terms, the Fiordland region contains the huge mountainous regions west of the line from Te Waewae Bay to Monowai to Te Anau, and includes the valleys of the Eglinton River and Hollyford River / Whakatipu Kā Tuka. The area is almost identical to that of the Fiordland National Park, and is marked by U-shaped valleys and fiords along the coast and steep mountains with foundations of hard rocks like gneiss, schist, granite and diorite, with the softer rock having been carved out by multiple glaciations. Fiordland contains New Zealand's oldest known plutonic (igneous) rocks and is dominated by the southernmost extent of the Southern Alps as the peaks reduce in height from north to south. The tallest mountain in the Fiordland region is Mount Tūtoko at , one of several peaks over 2,000 meters in the Darran Mountains. Southeast of this area, there are only a handful of peaks reaching 2,000 meters, however due to the rainy weather with cold winters and lack of hot summer temperatures, even these mountains contain glaciers and peaks with permanent snow cover. The southernmost glacier is situated on Caroline Peak, which only reaches , and in the southwest of Fiordland the altitude for permanent snowfields lowers to under . The past glaciation's deep carving out of the landscape has also resulted in fiord-like arms in Lake Manapouri and Lake Te Anau, and on the coast managed to cause several large chunks of the mainland becoming cut off. The largest of these uninhabited offshore islands are Resolution Island and Secretary Island, and are important conservation sites, particularly as sanctuaries for endangered native birds. Constituent fiords Twelve fiords, some stretching up to inland, and two inlets leading to three more fiords, extend along the coast from Piopiotahi in the north to Rakituma / Preservation Inlet in the south. In general, the fiords become wider from north to south as the height of the mountains decreases. The outlets of the southernmost fiords have a character more akin to inlets, with only the inner arms such as Long Sound resembling fiords. Milford Sound / Piopiotahi