Get up close to weta

A female weta

Weta five-star hotels in the Totara Reserve, Pohangina Valley

Nestled in the heart of the Tōtara Reserve in the Pohangina Valley is an unlikely location for a five-star hotel.

Five-star weta hotels are in the Totara Reserve, Pohangina Valley.

The hotels are wētā houses, a project by Horizons to show how predator-free the park is, says Horizon's biodiversity adviser Neil Gallagher.

"Part of the reason for the wētā house project is that we can monitor rat numbers.

"Wētā are indicators of a predator-free environment and healthy wētā numbers in the boxes will be an indicator that pest control is working in the park," Neil said.

"Lots of wētā is a good thing. We always focus on things we can see, the trees and the birds but what about the things that we can't see, those insects that call the bush home too?

"That's why we have these houses. We want people to open the door and have a look during the day.

"There's a perspex panel which will protect the wētā as they sleep."

Open the door, have a look and then close it again once you've seen what's inside."

The wētā houses, made from untreated macrocarpa with holes the insect will crawl in to, are mounted onto trees.

Horizons ecologist Dr Lizzie Daly holds a female weta

Horizons ecologist Dr Lizzie Daly says wētā are nocturnal, live in trees and like warm, moist places.

She said visitors to Tōtara Reserve can open the door of the wētā house and look to see who's home.

"It is likely that we will not only have wētā inside but also spiders and cockroaches, nice cockroaches — native cockroaches, and other invertebrates in the forest, and very occasionally small lizards will hang out inside the houses."

Lizzie said the Wellington and Auckland tree wētā overlap in the Manawatū region.

There are loads of different weta, Lizzie said as she held a female wētā that sat calmly on her hand.

A female weta

"One of the great things about wētā is because they are predated on by rats and other introduced predators, wētā numbers tend to reflect pest numbers.

"So when you have really low pest numbers you will often have larger weta populations and this can be measured through these houses."

Lizzie said these "creepy crawlies" often get a bad rap. They do look quite scary when you come across them, and that's probably quite good for them ... but if it's a female you can pick her up and put her under a tree."

Wētā play a huge role in our biodiversity, she says.

"We've got everything from really small ground wētā which live in burrows in the ground to large wētā which are the size of a bird.

"It's common knowledge that wētā can bite and jump, but don't be scared, they are part of the grasshopper family that have close relatives in South America and Australia."

"When they're a bit scared they'll often rub their back legs and they make that sort of rasping sounds, meaning 'I'm not so happy'. Wētā are beautiful little things. They're also pretty special as they wear their ears on their knees."