Submerged for aeons in the peat bogs of New Zealand’s north, swamp kauri is one of the world’s most valuable and exquisite timbers. (The recent jet-fuel pipeline rupture may have been caused by a person digging for swamp kauri.)

Swamp kauri is an unparalleled resource for global climate science—but as exports boomed and wetlands were ruined in the rush for the logs, the swamps have become an ideological battleground. What is the future of this ancient taonga?

Politicians enjoy the limelight of public attention for a season or two and are then forgotten—apart from a few, such as premier John Ballance, immortalised in stone outside the Parliamentary Library. But Parliament, the theatre in which they strut, endures. Imposing, sometimes grand, it is more than just these buildings in downtown Wellington. It is an institution governed by rules and traditions rooted in 17th-century England and populated by an army of civil servants who facilitate the business of governing a nation.