The Cape Reinga-Spirits Bay region of the Far North has great significance for Māori. According to Māori mythology, when the spirits of the dead return to Hawaiki, the homeland of their ancestors, ...

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 ...

Right now, says the Government, it’s OK to swim in just over 70 per cent of the country’s rivers and lakes. By 2040, it aims to make 90 per cent of rivers and lakes “swimmable” on the back of ...

The New Zealand that Charles Darwin dismissed as “the land of cannibalism and all atrocity” after his short visit in 1835, later featured prominently in his writings on evolution. When Charles Darwin ...

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 ...

Fifty years ago New Zealand whalers used to sit high above the entrance to Tory Channel, in the Marlborough Sounds, as they scanned Cook Strait for humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae). Humpbacks, ...

Early Development of nuclear-pow­ered thermal stations was driven by rising demand for electricity and the need for security of supply. The oil crisis of the early 1970s moved France and some other ...

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 ...

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 ...

Gardeners with a keen sense of history can now forge a botanical link with a plant which hasn’t been seen on these shores for millions of years. A species of Ecuadorian coconut has been success­fully ...

Much of New Zealand’s coastal property has an expiry date, with its value set to be wiped off the ledger in as little as nine years’ time, well before sea levels rise and coastlines are redrawn. What ...

One of the rarest ecologies in the world is hiding in plain sight, in the centre of the most central suburb of the largest city in New Zealand. Of more than 5000 hectares of rock forest that once ...