Buried treasure
For palaeontologists, the dark diatomite layers of Foulden Maar are like the shelves of a great library. Outside that library, bulldozers wait.
Goodwill hunting
Spearfishers are taking aim at freshwater pests instead of dwindling marine species.
Doing the Burt
For one fossil-fuelled week every summer, anyone can be an Invercargill motorcycling legend.
Road to recovery
Takahē numbers are rising by 10 per cent a year. The problem now is where to put them.
Ignorance is arrogance
Science denial, like so much brash narcissism, may actually be a cry for help.
False notes
The price of sound science is eternal vigilance.
In debt to nature
This year, it took the human race 212 days to exhaust what the planet generates in 365.
The evolutionary errors within your body
Evolution means we are perfectly adapted to our environment. Yeah, right.
Pattern recognition
Prime numbers act as locks and keys to bank accounts—and cracking them requires solving a riddle that dates back to ancient times.
The first test
If we’re serious about Predator Free 2050—about ridding New Zealand of every last rat, stoat and possum—then Fiordland poses its sternest backcountry test. If we can pull it off here, we can pull it off in any of our national parks. What makes this land so difficult—and so important?
No going back
Why is time the only dimension to flow in one direction?
Farming for our future
As things stand, the land can’t endure our enterprise much longer. If it’s to sustain our grandchildren, we have to change the way we think and cultivate. The Our Land and Water National Science Challenge is helping us forge a new accord with the soil beneath our feet.
The jellyfish that wouldn’t die
“Nothing can be said to be certain,” sighed Benjamin Franklin, “except death and taxes.” But there is one creature inconvenienced by neither.
Fits and giggles
Only a few species are capable of laughing. So why do we do it?
Why are whitebait on the brink of extinction?
There isn’t a catch limit on the lucrative whitebait fishery, which threatens to extinguish a cherished tradition and a small family of fish in one sweep of the net. If nothing changes, two whitebait species will be gone within five years, and the rest by 2034.
The lava caves hidden beneath suburban Auckland
Hidden beneath quiet suburban streets are clues to Auckland’s tumultuous geological past: lava caves.
How trees trade with each other below ground
Forests have their own information superhighway, and it works much like ours, carrying information, trade—and cybercrime.
Last chance to see
Twice the kākāriki karaka has returned from the dead. Orange-fronted parakeets were declared extinct in 1919 and again in 1965, but each time, the birds were concealed deep in the beech-forested valleys of Nelson and Canterbury. Now, the bird is approaching its third extinction, and this time, rangers have already scoured the valleys for hidden strongholds. This time, there isn’t a secret population waiting in the wings.
The coming swarm
Every summer, a plague of wasps gathers, ruining picnics, harassing trampers and disrupting ecosystems. Wasps outcompete bees for food, costing New Zealand about $130 million each year in loss of honey and pasture crops. Where wasps abound, biodiversity suffers: butterflies disappear, songbirds stop breeding and invertebrate communities are looted. But there’s hope on the horizon. Scientists are developing weapons, both biological and genetic, in a bid to cure the pestilence, once and for all.
Time crystals
For every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction, right? Not in the maverick world of this new form of matter.
