The Mackenzie Country is for many of us one of the reasons why we love this country so much. But those of us who have been there recently will know that it’s also a part of New Zealand that’s disappearing fast. The Mackenzie is being turned from a hundred shades of brown – which looks […]

New Zealand leads the world in clearing pests, however until now DOC has talked gingerly about the obvious next hurdle:  clearing pests from inhabited islands. Until now…. For fifteen years people have talked about getting pests off Stewart island (popn = 380), and five years ago a feasibility study was done to determine whether this is […]

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 […]

Frogs typically make good captive breeders, so the fact that for eight years experts couldn’t successfully raise one froglet from our Archey’s frog was proving mind-bogglingly frustrating. Enter Richard Gibson – an English reptile and amphibian breeding expert with over 20 years of experience. He flew here in late 2011 to take up a position […]

Cast you mind back to summer 2011-12 and if you lived in Auckland you will probably be saying “what summer”? It felt like we emerged from winter into perpetual spring. The rain was constant and the sun fleeting. This summer is the polar opposite. It may have started off with a few hit and misses. […]

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 […]

Recently, I got the chance to head down to the Denniston plateau – a piece of land that is currently being eyed up by coal-miners – to marvel at the ‘Persian carpet of biodiversity’ that the famed photographer Rod Morris talks so fondly about. I’ve been a macro-photographer for four years now, and as you […]

The furore sparked by Gareth Morgan over New Zealanders’ somewhat careless attitude to the way in which we let our cats stalk our neighbourhoods to pick off native birds is best evidenced in the suburbs surrounding Wellington’s much prized fenced sanctuary Zealandia. In neighbouring Kelburn – where my parents live – whiskered faces can be […]

For many of us, the summer break probably consisted of sun, swimming, perhaps a little family drama … and just getting away from work for a while. It was an opportunity to get away from work for Debs Martin, Forest & Bird’s Top of the South Field Officer, too … but only so she could […]