The Valley
Asher Emanuel, Bridget Williams Books
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Hope for the underbirds
For decades, the southern New Zealand dotterel had been disappearing, bird after bird killed on the nest, mostly by feral cats. Only 126 birds were left. Two years later, 105. Then everything changed.
How to stand alone
King’s Counsel Sally Gepp on the frustrating, high stakes, necessary work of environmental law.
The Covid Response: A Scientist’s Account of New Zealand’s Pandemic and What Comes Next
Shaun Hendy, Bridget Williams Books, $39.99
Two days in the forest of nightmares
In 2024, Naomi Arnold slogged her way up Te Araroa, walking from Bluff to Cape Reinga over about nine months. Here, 100 kilometres into her odyssey and deeply unsure about her capacity to finish it, she tackles Southland’s notoriously boggy Longwood Range.
One pig. One night. Fifty-six frogs.
Researchers have long suspected that pigs and other pests were eating our exquisitely rare native frogs. Now, we know for sure—and the scoffing is on an incredible scale.
Land of the bright white light
Two scientists mapping New Zealand’s light pollution have found our nights became a lot brighter over the past decade—and that most of our public lighting is now bright blue-white light-emitting diodes (LEDs) which negatively affect human and animal health. Te Pūkenga Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology ecologist Ellen Cieraad and wildlife biologist Bridgette Farnworth used satellite data to map New Zealand’s light pollution and found it grew by 37.4 per cent from 2012 to 2021. That’s faster than the global average. Using the Official Information Act, they also found most councils used millions of dollars of Waka Kotahi funding to replace streetlights with LEDs—but at least 77 per cent of those are cool, blue-white LEDs with a colour temperature of 4000 kelvin (K), shown to affect human circadian rhythms and wildlife. In a paper recently published in the New Zealand Journal of Zoology, bat scientists experimented with 4000K LED floodlights illuminating trees at a Tamahere home, discovering that local critically endangered long-tailed bats avoided the area when lit. That’s contrary to a popular theory that night-time light attracts insects, which attract bats. In humans, circadian rhythm disruption has been implicated in cancer, obesity, diabetes, depression and sleep disorders, and possibly increases the risk for dementia. [caption id="attachment_493565" align="alignnone" width="1600"] Councils rapidly adopted LED streetlights. Trace each "stream" to see a region's journey: Waimate, for example, only started installing them in 2020 yet by 2021, all of its streetlights were LEDs. Ashburton, on the other hand, started the process in 2000 and is now sitting at 83 per cent.[/caption] The International Dark Sky Association recommends lights should be 3000K or less; some European countries don’t allow anything over this. A few councils in New Zealand are light-savvy, too. Kaikōura, for example, recently installed dimmable 3000K and 2200K LEDs to help protect the light-sensitive Hutton’s shearwater, which kept crash-landing in town. But the default was 4000K, says Cieraad. If councils wanted a different temperature of outdoor lighting, they faced extra difficulties to obtain it. “So most councils didn’t.” It’s bad news for dark-sky scientists and enthusiasts, who long ago realised the plethora of cheap LEDs is threatening the natural night already lost in so many places around the world. A petition to legislate against light pollution, spearheaded by University of Canterbury emeritus astronomy professor John Hearnshaw, is now before a select committee. But most councils have now spent more than $150 million installing lights that interrupt our circadian rhythms and dazzle wildlife—lights that are too much like daylight for the night under which we evolved. They will be in place for some time. It’s frustrating, but Cieraad is optimistic. Public lighting makes up only about a fifth of light pollution, so there is space for businesses and citizens to be more thoughtful. We can buy less intense lights, or use dimmer switches and motion sensors, or shields that direct light downwards. Or, of course, the off switch.
The wall that Frank built
Why is there a knee-high strip of concrete in the middle of Lewis Pass?
Losing the ice
Virginia Woolf documents our melting glaciers.
The space balls are coming
Soviet Russia aimed a satellite at Venus. It hit Ashburton.
What storms may come
Much of New Zealand’s coastal property has an expiry date, with its value set to be wiped off the ledger in as little as nine years’ time, well before sea levels rise and coastlines are redrawn. What will happen to marae and communities by the beach? And why are we still buying—and building—properties right in the danger zone?
The future of seaweed
If you’ve ever smoothed on a blister pad, popped in a contact lens, or changed a disposable nappy, you’ve probably used a hydrogel—a type of material that can absorb large amounts of liquid. Hydrogels are usually made of petroleum, a fossil fuel. Now, a new hydrogel has been developed in New Zealand from one of the most abundant resources in the country: seaweed. A three-year research programme led by Scion developed the seaweed hydrogel after testing the properties of different species around New Zealand, including the introduced, invasive species Undaria pinnatifida and the native species Ecklonia radiata, which is commercially harvested. Seaweed-based hydrogels have been made before, but never from species that are growing around New Zealand in sustainably harvestable quantities. Scion has licensed the hydrogel to AgriSea, a Paeroa-based company, which is now trialling the hydrogel for use in wound dressings and as a growing medium for seedlings. AgriSea general manager Tane Bradley says seaweed remains an underrated resource: “People don’t realise how cool seaweed is and what we can do with it.”
Good as gold
Bluff Marine Radio operator Meri Leask has been voluntarily answering boaties’ calls for the past 40 years.
The day the Russians came
The second-oldest collection of Māori artefacts in the world—exceeded only by the one amassed by James Cook—is held in Russia. These 200-year-old treasures have immense value to iwi at the top of the South Island, whose ancestors traded with Russian explorers. Now, there’s a movement to bring these taonga home.
Wildfire
Fire season is coming, and first responders will soon be on high alert around New Zealand. With climate change causing more intense weather, we can expect more extreme wildfires in the future, causing millions of dollars’ worth of damage and endangering homes and lives. What is New Zealand’s risk from fire, and how can we better protect ourselves?
Why 10,000 steps?
Did you ever get a new Fitbit? Did you then spend the next few weeks compulsively checking your wrist, seeing how ‘good’ you’d been that day? Did you take the dog for an extra walk at 10pm just to watch the device tick over 10,000 steps, and go to bed basking in the glow of your achievement because Fitbit, and science, told you that was the minimum distance humans should walk each day to be healthy and live longer? Then welcome. Come on in. Join the club of those of us who’ve been royally duped by health and wellness marketing. Trouble is, there’s little evidence attached to 10,000 steps being better than any other distance to walk in a day. A study of 16741 women in the United States, with an average age of 72, found that after 7500 steps per day, the benefits appeared to level out, at least in the women studied. Investigators from Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston found that regardless of intensity, those who walked about 4400 steps each day lived longer than those who averaged just 2700 a day, but that this drop in mortality rates plateaued at 7500. Meanwhile, an Australian study of 1697 people aged 55-85 found that benefits generally increased per extra 1000 steps gained. So how did 10,000 steps become popular? It may stem from a Japanese pedometer company in the 1960s which felt that the character for 10,000, 万, looked similar to a running figure. Scientists are now looking at the speed of steps, or cadence, as an indicator of health, rather than distance.
Let there be night
At no other point in human history has the planet been this bright after the sun sets. But artificial lights affect us, and the environment around us, in subtle ways... What happens to us when there’s too much light in the night?
How to make a diamond
First, you’ll need some ancient seabed that has been buried in the Earth’s crust, cooked up deep down, and then spat out onto the surface. Macquarie University geoscientists studied how diamonds are formed. In experiments recreating the extreme pressures and temperatures found 200 kilometres underground, they demonstrated that seawater in sediment from the bottom of the ocean reacted in the right way to produce the balance of salts found in a diamond. Most diamonds found nearer the Earth’s surface are made this way. “There was a theory that the salts trapped inside diamonds came from marine seawater, but couldn’t be tested,” says lead author Michael Förster. “Our research showed that they came from marine sediment.”
The sense of belonging
For Melanie Burford, the only New Zealander to win a Pulitzer Prize for photography, the camera is of secondary importance.
Block busters
New Zealand’s forests were cleared at a record pace, and from this destruction, a sport arose: who can fell a tree the fastest? Competitive woodchopping transformed the labour of forestry into a community event. Now, 150 years on, a diminishing number of axemen and axewomen chop for top honours at A&P shows around the country.
