weta motels

Huds and I recently had a fantastic trip from Chch to Auck in a campervan, and along the way we stopped at a few sanctuaries to get inspired and Zealandia has certainly done that! What they lack in mature forest they make up for in resources and 'interactiveness' if that's a word? Down our way we're thinking ahead about what kind of goals we'd like to achieve over the next, 1 year, 2 year, 5 years and beyond and being able to see what other trusts are achieving is helpful. Zealandia has a huge resource of people, volunteers and also expertise and they look to be pretty well funded. They have a fantastic visitor that we could have spent hours in but only spent 1 hour. The other few hours we spent wandering around the accessible tracks, spotting tuatara, meandering with the takahe an enjoying the forest birds that were around, but shhhh, we have soooo many more ;-)




One of the stand-out set ups they have is their weta motels. Weta munchable to so many native critters and even more munchable to introduced ones so they are having a hard time in unprotected areas, clinging on to survival. They are nocturnal, don't like UV light at all so seek totally dark place to secret away in the day. Building safe places for them with doors allows people to get a glimpse during the day whilst still keeping them secure. These weta motels are made from logs, they blend into the forest around them and at Zealandia they stand in sets, one has a lock on the door, one is unlocked so the weta aren't constantly being annoyed, just every alternate day ;-)







To my eyes there looks to be a fair amount of work creating them but they are so beautiful and such a splendid way for people to be able to see them in their natural environment, they aren't in boxes or aquariums

These have labels on them, without them you'd not even know to look in them, they look just like the trees around them

We only had a few hours there but had we had a few days it would have been time well spent,

Chris :-)