Regional forests popular with visitors

The regional forests near Upper Hutt continue to be popular with visitors, with several experiencing a surge in visitor numbers last year.

Pakuratahi Forest (including Mt Climie), Tunnel Gully and the Rimutaka Rail Trail all showed an increase in visitor numbers last year while numbers were down at Kaitoke Regional Park.

“It was pleasing to see the overall trend of increased numbers, given it was a very wet summer last year. Kaitoke usually gets a lot of campers over the summer so the numbers are likely to bounce back if we get better weather this summer,” Cr Laidlaw says.

Greater Wellington Regional Council estimates visitor numbers for seven of the regional parks and forests it manages for the year to June 2004. The total visitor numbers were around 805,000, up on about 760,000 last year.

Visitors say they enjoy the regional parks and forests for the scenery and environment; peace and quiet; easy walking trails; and good picnic spots. The most popular activity is walking or jogging. Mountain biking is popular especially in the Akatarawa and Pakuratahi forests.

Greater Wellington is about to embark on a visitor monitoring framework which will provide more detailed information on visitor numbers and their preferred activities. It will use a variety of tools such as vehicle counters, visitor surveys and focus groups. It will also look at why people don’t visit the parks.

“It will be really useful to gain more thorough, ongoing picture of regional park visitors and what they want. It will help us manage the parks effectively for the good of the region,” Cr Laidlaw says.