Zealandia Ecosanctuary Guided Day Tour with Entry Wellington

Zealandia visitor centre and exhibition

The Zealandia tour starts at the visitor centre on Waiapu Road in Karori, where you check in at the ticket desk and meet your guide. Getting to Zealandia is easy: it is about ten minutes from the Wellington city centre by car, by the free shuttle that runs from the top of the cable car, or by cable car and a short walk through the Botanic Garden area. The visitor centre houses an exhibition that explains why New Zealand's wildlife is so unusual and so vulnerable.

Your guide uses the exhibition as an introduction: how islands that separated from other land tens of millions of years ago evolved birds that fill the roles of mammals, and how introduced rats, stoats and possums devastated them. The sanctuary's long-term vision is to restore this valley's forest and wildlife as closely as possible to its original state over hundreds of years, and the tour explains how far it has come since the fence was completed.

The predator-proof fence and the valley walkways

Before you enter the sanctuary there is a short bio-security bag check, because a single mouse carried in a backpack could undo years of work. Then you pass through the gate in the predator-proof fence, a specially designed barrier several kilometres long that encircles the whole 225-hectare valley and keeps out every introduced mammal from cats to mice. Inside, the paths follow the old Karori reservoir valley, with the lake below and regenerating forest on both slopes.

The guided walk covers a moderate distance on gravel paths with some gentle slopes and uneven surfaces, at a pace that allows plenty of stops. The guide reads the forest as you go, pointing out native trees, listening for bird calls and explaining the traps, feeders and nesting boxes you pass. This is the part of the Zealandia day tour that most visitors remember: a native forest alive with birdsong, minutes from a capital city.

Bird feeding stations: kaka, kakariki and tui

Along the walkways stand feeding stations where the sanctuary's most sociable birds gather, and the guide times the walk to reach them when activity is high. Kaka, the large olive-brown forest parrot with flashes of red under its wings, land noisily on the feeders and are often within a few metres of the path; the smaller green kakariki parakeets, tui with their white throat tufts and bellbirds with their clear chiming calls join them.

These birds were rare or absent from Wellington a generation ago and have spread from the sanctuary back into the city's suburbs, which is one of the strongest conservation success stories in New Zealand. The guide explains how each species was reintroduced and how they are monitored. Bring a camera with a zoom if you have one, but even a phone captures kaka at the feeders, and the guide knows the best spots.

Takahe, tuatara and the valley lake

In the open grassy areas near the lower lake the tour looks for takahe, the heavy flightless bird with blue-green plumage and a thick red beak that was believed extinct until a small population was rediscovered in the mountains of the South Island; a few live at Zealandia where visitors can see them grazing. Along sunny banks the guide also checks for tuatara, the lizard-like reptile that is the last survivor of an order older than the dinosaurs, basking outside its burrow.

Sightings of both depend on the weather and the time of day, which is why a guided walk improves your chances compared with exploring alone. After about two hours the group returns to the visitor centre, where the cafe serves coffee and meals and you can continue on the sanctuary's wider network of trails at your own pace; the entry ticket allows you to stay longer in the sanctuary after the guided part ends.