In the heart of the Waikato there’s a multimillion-dollar industry based on a gnat. Glowworms are big business, attracting well over half a million people a year to Waitomo.


	Rock stars In the heart of the Waikato there’s a multimillion-dollar industry based on a gnat. Glowworms are big business, attracting well over half a million people a year to Waitomo and prompting some to shift from working the land above ground to commercialising the creatures below it. But keeping the caves and their thousands of tiny performance artists in good health requires round-the-clock care.

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Swap a forest park for an irrigation dam

In February, Conservation Minister Maggie Barry took Forest and Bird to the Supreme Court to defend her intention of giving protected conservation land to an irrigation scheme. Dave Hansford asks if this type of land swap should be permitted.

Guiding light

It was Martha Ash’s debut caving trip, and she had just reached the top of a waterfall in Gardner’s Gut at Waitomo when her light went out. She glanced across at her two companions, and the moon-shaped glow of their lights. But all of a sudden, their lamps extinguished in rapid succession, plunging the trio into darkness.


	After the deluge In the first week of March, a low began to crawl across the Tasman Sea, bringing a humid northerly airstream to the North Island. A warm front swept down, pushing heavy rain ahead of it. On the Coromandel Peninsula, uplift over the ranges made the rain torrential. Autumn rainfall looks set to break records, and ‘teleconnections’ may be to blame.