Life is constantly in motion around the world, floating across oceans and colonising new shores, as frequently today as it did hundreds of millions of years ago. So what’s arriving along New Zealand’s coastlines?
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?
Poachers are raiding fragile caves to make a quick buck flogging moa bones to the highest bidder. Is it right?
What would happen if city suburbs as well as offshore islands enjoyed freedom from introduced predators? Is it possible for New Zealand to eliminate them all—stoats, ferrets, weasels, possums, and three species of rat?
Are there plenty more fish in the sea? Reports of falling hoki stocks off the West Coast and the near-disappearance of crayfish from the Hauraki Gulf suggest that our ‘best in the world’ fisheries management may not be living up to the hype. Three decades ago, the right to catch and sell fish became a property right, one that has now accumulated in the hands of a few. How has that worked out for people—and for fish?
As the sun sets on New Zealand’s manufacturing industries, a photographer visits a foundry and steel mill that represent the last of their kind.
Giant carnivorous land snails don’t ask for much: moist leaf litter to burrow into, earthworms to suck up like spaghetti. But if the lower layer of the forest is nibbled away, if sunlight reaches the soil, and if one month of drought follows another, molluscs relying on damp homes struggle to survive.
Zip, pip, chuck, goes the call of Aotearoa’s smallest bird. It may turn out to be one of the earliest forms of language.
No portraits exist of one of the most important people in Pacific history. Tupaia was a man of many talents: high priest, artist, diplomat, politician, orator and celestial navigator. After fleeing conflict on his home island of Ra’iātea for Tahiti, he befriended botanist Joseph Banks, and joined the onward voyage of James Cook’s Endeavour. Arriving in New Zealand in 1769, Tupaia discovered he could converse with Māori. He became an interpreter, cultural advisor and bringer of news from islands that Māori had left long ago. 250 years on, we are barely beginning to know who he was.
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.
The Mokohinau stag beetle is one of the world’s most endangered species, occupying less than an acre of scrub on a rocky tower in the middle of the ocean. Its habitat is so precarious that Auckland Zoo and DOC are hoping to safeguard a population of beetles on the mainland as a form of insurance—that is, if there are any left.
Some species just like it cooler. Others have withdrawn little by little to higher altitudes, making new homes where it’s too cold for their enemies to follow. But warmer seasons allow predators and diseases to gain ground and advance above the bushline—meaning that the alpine zone is no longer the refuge it once was.
No country has anything quite like New Zealand’s network of backcountry huts, but many of these shelters were at risk of being lost to dilapidation, old age and the ravages of the weather. Now, volunteers around the country are preserving remote huts—and the heritage they represent—for the next generation of trampers.
For palaeontologists, the dark diatomite layers of Foulden Maar are like the shelves of a great library. Outside that library, bulldozers wait.
Spearfishers are taking aim at freshwater pests instead of dwindling marine species.
Why did hundreds of dead kororā—little blue penguins—wash up on beaches around the country two summers ago? Has their fate got anything to do with the weather? Or has it got something to do with us?
What happens when you lose a limb?
Last October, Chris and Jorinde Rapsey and their two children set off from Cape Reinga to walk Te Araroa, the 3000-kilometre track that runs the length of New Zealand. They lived outdoors for five months and walked an average of 20 kilometres a day. For nine-year-old Elizabeth and six-year-old Johnny, it was an immersive education—a form of learning increasingly absent from the lives of young New Zealanders, even as international research affirms the importance of children spending time in nature.
After the attack on two Christchurch mosques, after the number of dead and injured climbed and climbed, New Zealand came to several hard realisations: This is not a peaceful and equitable country. Many people go about their daily lives steeled to hatred. At the same time, people in Christchurch banded together to help the hundreds left bereaved and traumatised by an act of terrorism.
Seabird scientists are creating a fake home for shags on the Noises, an island group off the coast of Auckland, in the hope that the Hauraki Gulf’s rapidly diminishing spotted shag population will be fooled into thinking it’s a great place to start a family.
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