The record of the Earth’s past climate has been frozen in ice bound up in ice sheets and glaciers on land, and floating on the seas in great ice shelves. Cores extracted from this ice tell an alarming story, and dramatically alter climate projections.
Fifty years ago, plans to raise the levels of two of the country’s most scenic lakes sparked a green awakening in New Zealand.
Nestled among the eastern ranges of the Southern Alps, an hour's drive from Christchurch, lies a gentle basin bulging with huge boulders and rock outcrops. The area, known as Castle Hill or Kura Tawhiti, is a Mecca for rockclimbers and skiers, but long before Europeans and their sheep appeared, Maori appreciated that the place had a special magic—one that not even the snows of winter could shroud.
Fiordland National Park consists of a million hectares of rock and river, forest and fiord—some of the wildest and most untouched country in New Zealand. The place is a magnet to adventurers, who come here from around the world to experience true wilderness.
From 1860 to 1864 Samuel Butler chased sheep in the foothills of the Southern Alps, explored unknown mountain passes and propounded his philosophies to the gentlefolk of Canterbury. He left behind a legend and a 100,000-acre sheep station, Mesopotamia. It was there that novelist James McNeish went to discover what it was that inspired one of the world's great satirists.
Deep in the subantarctic, where the Furious Fifties welcome no intruder, aspiring settlers and shipwrecked sailors encountered despair and failure on the Auckland Islands. Today these same islands are regarded as some of New Zealand's most magnificent wild places.
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