Pareraho: Lower Hutt’s best kept natural secret.
The suburbs of Kelson and Belmont, perched high on their windswept hills, exist within a relatively unknown natural wilderness area. Gorges sweep down from the high hills of Belmont Regional Park to join Te Awa Kairangi, the forest is broken only by narrow corridors of communities. The heart of the forest is the rugged catchments of Speedy’s and Belmont Streams, which are separated by a high ridge that is the location of an ancient Pa site. The forest includes steep sided gorges, waterfalls, a swimming hole that not many people know about, and large areas that are impressively wild and rarely visited. Before Europeans arrived in the area, the Pareraho track traversing the high ridge was the main crossing from the Hutt Valley to Pauatahanui.
For many years, a few local residents on the hills have been quietly attending to their backyard - growing and planting tree seedlings in the land around the pony club, uncovering old trails through the forest around the pa site, and placing and maintaining traps to reduce the invasive predators.
In 2008 the Hill Road Community was created which has co-ordinated some community building activities such as talks and film evenings in Maranatha school, the Fridge Library, tree planting, ‘Free-cycle’ days, family picnics and local walks.
Then in 2019 interest in the bush between Hill Road and Kelson accelerated, and the Pareraho Forest Trust was created. It was born at a community meeting about predator trapping in Belmont Hall. For the sake of the purposes of the Trust, the Pareraho Forest includes all of Kelson, Hill Road and Park Road, and any areas of bush in between, extending from the motorway up into Belmont Regional Park. That means that if you live in one of these suburbs you are inhabiting part of the forest!
The Pareraho Forest Trust is a charitable trust. Its objectives are to encourage the conservation and enhancement of the natural environment of Pareraho Forest so that people of all ages can enjoy the area for exploration, learning and recreation. The Trust also aims to collaborate positively with other organisations locally or nationwide who have similar aims and activities.
Part of the work of the Trust is to build on the existing predator control efforts in the area by setting up and looking after a wide network of predator traps, helping the native plants, insects and birds of the Forest to flourish. This includes the creation of a backyard trapping network as well as working within reserves.
We are looking for volunteers to host traps so that numbers of rats, stoats and other introduced predators are reduced. If you are interested in being involved in this, contact Predator Free Pareraho coordinators.