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 ...

New Zealanders love their native galaxiids—sandwiched between two pieces of white bread for the most part. What most people don’t realise is that whitebait are actually the juvenile of a spectacular ...

Plantations of exotic timber trees, especially pines, are looked on with disdain by many as alien monocultures, an unpleasant accommodation necessary to protect precious indigenous forests from the ...

Barely seven per cent of New Zealand is land. The rest of it, the wet bit, covers four million square kilometres. In 2016, photographer Richard Robinson won a Canon Personal Project Grant that enabled ...

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 ...

The south coast of the South Island is not an area commonly associated with gold-rushes, but in the 1880s it was the scene of New Zealand’s most distinctive Chinatown. The Round Hill gold­field and ...

In 2100, my youngest grandson will be 89. I have been wondering how his generation will judge ours on climate change. Will they condemn us for knowing the risks but burning fossil fuels regardless?

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 ...

For nearly two centuries, the origins of a Spanish whaler and trader who founded a dynasty on the east coast were a mystery. Manuel Jose’s descendants are New Zealand’s largest family, and have ...

Sea lions are coming home to the coasts of southern New Zealand, returning to their former territory after more than 300 years in exile. The big question is: Can we make room for them? A curious New ...

Once thought to be an insect which turns into a plant, the vegetable caterpillar is one of the more bizarre oddities in New Zealand’s fauna. In 1763, an English scientist claimed to have discovered an ...

Most manta encounters take place in the area north of Te Hauturu-o-Toi/Little Barrier Island, but their ways are still a mystery, says Lydia Green, who coordinates a database of public manta ray ...