“A large land, uplifted high” is how, in December 1642, the Dutch led by Abel Tasman first described what was to become known as New Zealand. They were looking upon the western side of the Southern Alps which rise precipitously from a narrow coast to top at 4068m (12,349 feet) above sea level. Of course, […]

 I recently returned from a trip to plant trees on one of our most windswept and distant archipelagos – the Chatham Islands.   The two week Department of Conservation trip begun with a car-ride around the main island which has been stripped of most of it trees, seeded with grassed and populated with cattle and […]

I am fifty three years old and for 3 generations our family has farmed cows on the same farm. Twenty years ago intensification began replacing traditional farming methods and farmers, like myself, were caught up in this drive to reap more milk. I call it the ‘moron theory’ – we’re morons the more we put […]

The Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Bill, known as the EEZ Bill, is among the most important pieces of legislation being progressed by John Key’s government. Forest & Bird, and everyone who cares about our marine environment, wants to support it. As drafted at the moment, the Bill risks our oceans and […]

Euphoria often takes a while to sink in.  Shock.  Disbelief.  They’re the emotions that come first. And so with the Mokihinui.  A river I know intimately, having been tossed into it from a raft at the whim of a wave. On Tuesday, Meridian Energy announced its withdrawal from plans to dam the Mokihinui, the mighty […]

It was a four-day whistle-stop tour of the top of the south. There were long-tailed bats, fantails, royal spoonbills, pukeko and a whale. It was definitely a whale, and definitely not a rock. Forest & Bird’s National Volunteer Co-ordinator Heidi Quinn had spent the last seven weeks on the road visiting almost every single Forest […]

Rambunctious. Confused. Operatic. The spirited call of the tui with its clicks, coughs, wheezes, bells and whistles has been pinned with many an adjective. And now a scientific study has proven one of them to be true: elaborate. The very first study into the tui’s song has revealed that it song ranks as one the […]

For the past four months or so, I have spent much of my time watching the watchful karearea (New Zealand Falcon – Falco novaeseelandiae). Stillness and patience allowed me to observe their progress through aerial courtship displays, mating, nest finding, laying, incubating, hatching, brooding and feeding, to finally fledging a chick. Ironically, after all that […]

Although a National government has been returned, in a way Kiwis did “vote for nature” as our election campaign asked. The prospects for Nature in the next three years are not all quite as bleak as you might imagine. It is a very interesting Parliament and there are some reasons to hope that Forest & […]