In the South Island’s remote subalpine regions, a highly terrestrial songbird—one of two surviving species of New Zealand wren—has hopped, chirped and flown in the face of extinction. There are four ...

In the late 19th century, news of a strange antipodean bird with beautiful tail feathers, orange wattles, and a long curved beak spread around the British Empire. To Māori, it was a tapu bird—a sacred ...

When the four-masted barque Pamir burst into Wellington Harbour out of the rolling vastness of the Southern Ocean on a cold and blustery day in late July, 1941, its captain, Verner Björkfelt, would ...

One of the world’s smallest nations is transforming its economy from subsistence to sustainability. Will Niue’s brave new plan work? Each year between August and October, humpbacks rest in the calm ...

In spite of a widespread belief that their race and culture are extinct, Moriori people have survived on the Chatham Islands and are undergoing a cultural revival similar to that of their mainland ...

Nightfall, and the forest comes alive with squeaking. Or it used to. Lesser short-tailed bats are clinging on in a handful of places, their populations blinking out of existence. Yet researchers are ...

In the largest pest-eradication operation yet undertaken in New Zealand, 11,300 ha Campbell Island was blitzed with rat poison in the winter of 2001. Helicopters, such as this Jet Ranger, buzzing ...

In inky darkness, Philip Rush dived from the three-metre rigid inflatable and touched a hand to Dog Rock, at the southwest extremity of Kapiti Island. This formality dispensed with, he turned and ...

No one knew that Kaikōura was home to the world’s only alpine-dwelling seabird until an amateur ornithologist following a rumour discovered its burrows high in the mountains. As the bizarre attributes ...

You don’t need a PhD to find a new species, unearth a rare fungus or name an asteroid. New Zealanders with no specialist training are contributing to scientific research by monitoring streams, ...

Here we are—a nation of parents, grandparents and children all in the same boat, together at home. He waka eke noa. Every day of the lock-down we will post a story or video and set of activities that ...

Hailing from Australia, where it is most common in Melbourne, the Gisborne cockroach was first recorded in Gisborne in the 1960s, but is thought to have arrived earlier as it was noticed in Auckland ...