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 ...

For a long time it was a good place to be an endangered skink—a vertical sheet of rock at the head of Milford Sound/Piopiotahi, too snowy and steep for mice to bother with. But as the climate warms, ...

93% of New Zealand is covered in salt water. 80% of our biodiversity is in our seas. And yet this is the part of our realm we understand the least and treat the worst. Today, attitudes are turning ...

A nondescript field in Cromwell is the world’s first—and only—nature reserve dedicated to the protection of an invertebrate. It doesn’t look like your average nature reserve. A balding paddock ...

People and livestock gobble so much fish that the seas soon won’t keep up. Is the answer to grow fish on land? After decades of research, scientists are cracking the secrets to commercially ...

The wall went up in 1964. It didn’t go up very far, mind you—1.4 metres of it was under the ground, with only about 50 centimetres sticking out the top. But Frank Evison, the prominent geophysicist ...

It was 1841 when missionary William Colenso visited a Māori village somewhere near Whangārei, in the rohe of Ngāpuhi. Here, he encountered women boiling potatoes in a bronze pot—an unusual departure ...

The invasive seaweed Caulerpa brachypus was discovered in New Zealand just over a year ago, and it promises to ruin everything. On Aotea/Great Barrier Island, people are sacrificing their way of life ...

Six parrot species are set to be banned in the Auckland region due to the dangers they pose to native wildlife. Is this fair? The bird watches me with an inquisitive eye. She’s huge, nearly a metre ...

To human ears, birdsong is poetic, wholesome and romantic—even transcendental. But as far as most birds are concerned, “it’s all sex and violence”, says Kristal Cain, an evolutionary ecologist at the ...

The steep underwater walls of Fiordland’s sounds are home to a lush ecosystem of sponges, corals, and algae in camouflage shades of green and brown. Last summer, divers in Te Puaitaha/Breaksea Sound ...