The bittern’s eerie, booming call sounds like a lament, a tangi ringing across the marshes. Now, the birds themselves are in trouble. A bittern’s mottled brown and beige plumage helps it blend into ...

For 13 years conservationists have promoted marine protection as a good thing for the Hauraki Gulf. Now they have their wish, ...

There are more cautionary notes in Māoridom dealing with mana than you could shake the proverbial stick at. It is a source of both personal and collective strength, pride and identity. Mishandled, it ...

Karioi maunga towers above the Raglan coastline, shaping both the weather and the region’s famous surf. Those arriving in Aotearoa on the Tainui waka saw Karioi on the horizon, and some later settled ...

“Epic” is an overused word. I’m in the heart of Mount Aspiring National Park. We’re surrounded on three sides by 400-metre cliffs, over which tumble curtains of water. Boulders the size of townhouses ...

Introduced over 150 years ago as the basis for a fur trade, the Australian brush-tail possum has instead become an ecological plague, chomping its way through millions of tonnes of forest foliage a ...

NZ-VR is a project undertaken by New Zealand Geographic, Sir Peter Blake Trust, The Pew Charitable Trusts and Foundation North’s GIFT fund, using virtual reality to connect New Zealanders with their ...

What would the beach be without red-billed gulls? We may be about to find out. Two huge colonies have already gone under and the next biggest, in Kaikōura, is failing fast. In December 2023, ...

Bruce “Chopper” Reay has lived in a remote deerstalkers’ hut on the edge of Fiordland National Park for most of his life. But he’s not exactly off the grid. If you didn’t know better, Bruce Reay and ...

The release of Disney’s Moana in te reo was a landmark for Māori language revitalisation. As that rebirth gathers steam, mita, or dialects are returning to the fore. When The Lion King Reo Māori hit ...

The market—and human appetite—are often to blame for ecosystem destruction. But in the case of kina barrens, they might be part of the solution. Kina fisherman Peter Herbert, universally known as Herb ...

We cull hybrids. We steal their eggs, and break up inter-species breeding pairs, all in the name of genetic integrity. Protecting the mauri. We created this tangle by bringing in exotic species. Can ...