Anyone who got up this morning and tuned into this story on Radio New Zealand’s Morning Report can be forgiven for thinking that they woke up in Opposite Land. In the same week that Bolivia passed a law to protect its native freshwater dolphins from fishing and pollution, New Zealand voted against a resolution to […]
A bedraggled-looking possum floating on a log near Kapiti Island has hit the headlines recently. In a situation reminiscent of Robert Hewitt’s epic survival tale, where the keen ex-navy diver floated in the Kapiti currents for four days and three nights until being found by his navy friends off Mana Island, a possum floating on […]
In the spirit of the Olympics, I thought it timely to feature some of our extreme athletes of the natural world, masters of swimming endurance, strength and agility. I am of course talking about wriggly, wonderful, whitebait. They would clock up a series of gold medals, being so tiny yet having been found 200km out […]
Dear New Zealand, It’s time we had the talk. You know the one? The one we’ve been putting off for aaages and aaaages because, well, because we love our pussycats in this country. We have one of the highest cat ownership rates in the world, if not the highest. Almost half of all households in […]
“It’s crazy and ambitious, but it might be worth a shot.” Those were the words of Sir Paul Callaghan in his last public lecture in Wellington this year regarding the idea of getting rid of predators in New Zealand. For good… Recently, I was lucky enough to attend the Transit of Venus forum, brainchild of […]
Everybody’s got an eel story in New Zealand. When we were kids we used to go eeling, digging what Dad called a “Maori eel trap” – a trench next to a lakeside or stream, dug long and thin enough for an eel to swim up with some meat in some pantihose staked to the top […]
Blogger: Conservation Advocate Nic Vallance It would be easy to lump all farming in the same boat, point the finger and say that all farming was causing the decline in our freshwater quality and quantity in New Zealand. That’s simply not true, and not fair on the farming community. My family come from a farming […]
Blogger: Forest & Bird Conservation Advocate, Nic Vallance Over this summer period, a national hero was found dead of natural causes. This hero is probably unknown to most New Zealanders, and is unusual in that he was of the kakapo variety. Richard Henry was perhaps our most famous nocturnal parrot, the last of the Fiordland […]
Blogger: Forest & Bird’s Conservation Advocate, Nic Vallance At the end of last year, our bovine citizenship reached 4.3 million – we now have more dairy cows than New Zealanders. And although this milestone has been on the cards for years now this fact has been met with a muted response from environmentalists. The fact is we’re […]