I cautiously peered into a gnarled puriri tree and stared eye to eye with a black petrel. I was elated – the birds were back, all the way from South America and preparing to breed, right here in my backyard. ‘My’ backyard is not mine at all, but is where my husband and I currently […]

Little Barrier Island is one of those magical places where time feels as if it stands still and birds, so rare elsewhere, abound. Kokako and saddleback are just part of the everyday soundscape and bellbirds are so common that their song is a constant companion not just an occasional delightful toll. Huge kauri and hard […]

Snapper are one of New Zealand’s most popular fishes, and are highly sought after – both recreationally and commercially. They are found around the shallow waters of the North Island, making them an ideal fishing target. The Kaipara Harbour, north of Auckland, is one of the largest harbours in the world. It is a large […]

Good Afternoon to the Hon. Dr Nick Smith, How do you place a price on lives that have been saved from tragedy Dr Smith? By taking away the “seat belts in the conservation estate vehicle“. The area and programme managers are the “seatbelts”. The steering wheel may be your mandate, your perception of the “best […]

Last Saturday (March 9), Conservation Minister Nick Smith announced that he had approved the creation of five new marine reserves off the South Island’s West Coast. On the face of it, that may sound like the sort of thing that Forest & Bird might applaud. And in many ways, this was good news. But this […]

This summer, keen mollusc-o-philes may be interested in taking advantage of the warmer weather, and getting out and meeting some lesser-known local bivalves. While the kākahi or freshwater mussel may look humble, it has some pretty interesting life history traits.  While most mussels expel eggs and sperm for external fertilisation in the water, a mother […]

Whitebaiting is an iconic part of life that most New Zealanders take for granted, but this traditional harvest is now threatened by the damage we have wrought for a century or more on our waterways, but particularly in the last few decades with intensification of dairy farming. We have doubled the number of dairy cows […]

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 […]

As the first shafts of morning light touch the golden sands of  Tata Beach, near Takaka, silhouettes of small groups of shags, and individual birds can be seen arriving, silently winging in from the nearby Tata Islands. Sometimes as few as about 200 birds  arrive and at other times there can be up to a […]