Boiling water and the stench of sulphur hardly seem a combination conducive to life, yet some bacteria thrive in such hostile environments. Biologists are beginning to think that the first life forms ...

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, ...

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 ...

A team of New Zealanders and Tongans have just carpeted a remote volcanic island in Tonga with poisoned bait, hoping to eradicate rats—and with that one action, restore a vibrant, interconnected ...

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 ...

A study by the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency of illegal, unreported and unregulated tuna fishing has found that the problem may not be as bad as was feared. It estimated that between 2017 and ...

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 ...

Legend has it that the first person to cross the Southern Alps from Hokitika to the Rakaia was a woman travelling alone. The pass she discovered became an important route for war parties and trade. In ...

Don’t call them swamps. Bogs soak up and store more carbon than forests do, but when they’re drained and used for agriculture, that immense amount of carbon is slowly released. The entrance to one of ...

Wallabies may have evolved in Australia, but they’re so well suited to life in New Zealand that they have reached plague numbers for the second time in a century, eating their way through the ...

In 1845 Governor George Grey set aside 80 hectares of central Auckland for a park. On the crest of an ancient volcano, it is a memorial, a recreation space, a green heart for the city and its citizens ...