Drylands are disappearing rapidly, say Sue Maturin, Otago Southland regional manager, and Jen Miller, Canterbury and West Coast regional manager. Drylands contain some of the least protected and most threatened native ecosystems and species in New Zealand. We’ve already lost more than 70 percent of the country’s original drylands, and only three percent are legally protected. New Zealand’s dryland zone […]
It’s nearly that time of year again! Forest & Bird’s annual Bird of the Year competition will kick off on October the 5th, so get ready to vote for your favourite bird. Over 50 birds will fight it out to be crowned our Bird of the Year. This year it’s about more than glory as […]
Many people think of hedgehogs as the cute, harmless creatures they see in British children’s story books. But in New Zealand, they’re known pests that are lethal to native wildlife. Last night, on Campbell Live, we met the founders of Hedgehog Rescue New Zealand. They take in sick or injured hedgehogs and rehabilitate them before returning them to the wild. The […]
Forest & Bird owns a number of important reserves around the country. One of these is Te Rere Reserve – a 70 hectare block of regenerating native forest located near the southernmost point of the South Island. It is home to about 70 yellow-eyed penguins – the rarest penguin in the world. Every summer for thousands of years, these penguins […]
World Wildlife Day this week highlighted the desperate situation faced by many wild creatures around the world. It’s a good reason to look at a native species that few New Zealanders will have ever seen and some work being done to save it from extinction. Hochstetter’s frog is one of our four native frogs, which […]
After a weekend doing ground-based pest control, I can better appreciate the value of aerial 1080. I slid down a muddy bank with nothing to grab but a soggy tree fern stump that lifted from the soil like a mushroom. Through the rain and the supplejack lassoes I could see Ian and Merryl a few […]
Windthrow is a natural part of NZ’s forest dynamics of catastrophe-regeneration. Thousands of hectares are levelled every year in our public conservation land forests and have done so for millenia. It is a part of the natural forest cycle in this windy country. Yet we do not intervene to sell the fallen timber in protected […]
Wandering through much of Aotearoa’s remnant bush in 2014 can be a lonely experience. One has more chance of seeing a hobbit than a kaka or kokako, and the experience is a long way from Joseph Banks’ much repeated description of the the dawn chorus in Queen Charlotte Sound in 1770: “I was awakened by […]
Our ten week cat-cam pilot study to investigate the wild diets of our cats, their foraging habits and general behaviour has given us several interesting insights into the world of our cats. Domestic cats are creatures that live so closely to us, and yet – in NZ at least – studies have been limited. Indeed, […]