What's different in Avondale
An urban stream
Auckland Council has tested Avondale Stream since 2012, and classes its 339 hectare catchment as urban: houses, roads and yards rather than farmland or bush. Stream banks are on the council's list of places rats live, so a section near the water is worth watching.
The Whau and the harbour
Whau Creek has been one of Auckland Council's estuary water quality sites since 1991. Out towards the harbour, DOC's Motu Manawa (Pollen Island) Marine Reserve protects 500 hectares of mudflat, saltmarsh and mangrove, with the Rosebank Peninsula on its southern edge.
A town centre and an industrial road
Tātaki Auckland Unlimited names Avondale and New Lynn as the main town centres in the Whau Local Board area, with the Rosebank Road industrial precinct close by. Shops, food businesses and homes packed close together give cockroaches and rodents plenty to live on.
Middling tree cover
The Whau Local Board had 17 per cent tree canopy in 2016/18, a little under the 18 per cent across urban Auckland, and a small net loss since 2013.
Which Avondale is this?
This page is for Avondale in Auckland, in the Whau Local Board area. Christchurch has an Avondale too: if that's where you are, the Christchurch page is the one you want.
The pests we'd expect in Avondale
Rats come first. DOC links Norway rats, the bigger ground-living kind, with towns and human activity, and an urban stream with houses along it suits them. Ship rats are the climbers, getting into ceilings from trees and fences.
If it's small, amber and in the kitchen, it's probably a German cockroach, and in a block of flats it's worth asking the neighbours. Argentine ants are under sustained control across the whole region, so expect them here as much as anywhere in Auckland.
What you can do, and what to leave
You can
- Keep bins lidded and food scraps out of the garden.
- Clear rubbish and timber piles away from the back fence and any stream bank.
- Seal gaps around the pipes under the kitchen sink.
- Talk to neighbours in a block of units if cockroaches turn up.
Leave to a pest business
- Bait stations, especially where there are children and pets.
- Cockroach treatment in kitchens and shared walls.
- An Argentine ant colony that crosses several sections.
If it were our house in Avondale
We'd take a torch to the kitchen after dark and to the back fence at dusk, because that's when the two we'd bet on in Avondale, cockroaches and rats, are out. Note what you see, then tell us. If you're not sure what it is, Not sure what it is works fine.
Want someone to look at it?
Tell us what you've seen and your postcode, and a local pest business that handles exactly that calls you to talk it through.
