Regenerative agriculture is supposed to save us from climate change, freshwater pollution, soil erosion, drought, the invertebrate apocalypse and poor mental health. Does it live up to the hype?
Old bones are a staple of museum collections, but only a handful of people in New Zealand have the skills to prepare them for display. Recovering the skeleton of a large animal—rotting it down, preparing, cleaning and articulating it—is a long and demanding journey that only the most dedicated pursue.
Hundreds of millions of years ago, mantis shrimps evolved technologies we’re still trying to copy.
Feijoas have become a New Zealand emblem. So how did they end up in Aotearoa, and how did we end up adoring them—to the point of obsession, for some—when feijoas have not really caught on anywhere else?
In March, researchers around New Zealand dropped what they were doing to begin studying the novel coronavirus. Some realised that, if an effective immunisation is found, there will immediately be a long queue of nations jostling to buy billions of doses. So they resolved to make a vaccine themselves.
Sea lions are coming home to the coasts of southern New Zealand, returning to their former territory after more than 300 years in exile. The big question is: Can we make room for them?
Freelance jockeys, keen spectators, farming families with station hacks and horse trainers with thoroughbreds descend on the Wairarapa every autumn to take part in one of New Zealand’s longest-running events.
You’ve hurt yourself in the mountains, and you’ll never make it out on your own. What happens next?
The once abundant Hauraki Gulf is on the brink of collapse, and while science is clear on how to repair it, many are putting rights before responsibilities. Here’s what needs to happen.
There’s no going back. New Zealand has been irreversibly changed since COVID-19 first arrived here in February. How will this end?
Many of our skinks and geckos are so new to science that they don’t even have names. Much of what we do know about our lizards is thanks to an amateur herpetologist from Invercargill with no academic training.
Last century, firearms flooded into New Zealand with returning servicemen, and during peacetime guns became synonymous with an honest, healthy way of life in the hills. Now, there are thought to be 1.5 million firearms in New Zealand—one for every three people—used as conservation or farming tools, or simply for sport. To some, firearms symbolise self-sufficiency and responsibility. To others, they’ll never be more than instruments of death. But is this issue as clear-cut as it seems?
The rarest bird in this country is the fairy tern, with perhaps 36 adults left in existence. It’s got everything going against it: weather, cats, its own DNA, and the fact that humans love the white-sand beaches where it raises its young. Only a small group of people, many of them volunteers, stand between it and oblivion. What will we lose if it vanishes altogether?
Three years ago, our most active volcano warned us of its impulsive and devastating power. We didn’t listen.
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.
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