Limbo | New Zealand Geographic
At Lake Ellesmere/Te Waihora, Joe Harrison documents an era of change and uncertainty. The mist hangs low over Lake Ellesmere/Te Waihora, a body of water that’s not really a lake, nor a lagoon, but floats somewhere between the two. Reeds and wading birds puncture the dense bottle-green of the water, rich, fragile ecosystems swirling in […]
Inside the Land March - New Zealand Geographic
Te Rōpū o te Matakite: the seers, the ones with foresight. That’s the name of the group that revered leader Dame Whina Cooper led on a 1000-kilometre march from the Far North to Wellington in 1975, protesting against more than a century of colonial laws designed to alienate Māori from their land. On the estuarine […]
Kākāpō: Bird on the brink - New Zealand Geographic
In a land renowned for its unusual birds, the kākāpō—a giant flightless nocturnal parrot with a bizarre breeding system—has to be one of the strangest. Although it has been lingering perilously close to extinction for the past half century, there is renewed hope that this icon of conservation effort has a future after all. For […]
A map of the future - New Zealand Geographic
Sea-level rise doesn’t affect coasts equally—one bay may be drowned while the beach next door remains the same as ever. Predicting sea-level rise needs to take into account tectonic movement of the land, prevailing winds, coastal erosion and Arctic meltwater. Now, the first-ever detailed map of New Zealand’s coastlines shows what may happen.
The Kelp - New Zealand Geographic
Rimurapa connects Ngāi Tahu historian Mike Stevens to his southern ancestry. His Bluff-based whānau hold customary rights to harvest juvenile tītī, or muttonbirds, from islands around Stewart Island/Rakiura, and they still use traditional kelp bags, called pōhā, to store their birds.
What happened on Whakaari? - New Zealand Geographic
The eruption started at 9.35pm, with big heaves inside the crater. At 10.03pm, it began pelting the walking track with projectiles, but withheld its final energy until 10.11pm when, with a whoomph, it sent the plume sky-high.A scalding current of steam and debris, coloured green by the hydrothermally altered rock it contained, rolled right over …
The underground forest - New Zealand Geographic
For many professional mycologists, the annual Fungal Foray is one of their few chances to do what they’ve trained for. As organiser Renee Johansen, an ecologist at Manaaki Whenua, tells me, “This event is really important because people get a chance to go out and collect, hone their skills, share their knowledge and add to the New Zealand collection.”
Farming - New Zealand Geographic
Society The future of food. Most of New Zealand’s lowland areas are now devoted to food production. How we produce food for consumption, sale and export continues to shape our landscape and lives, but the 90 per cent of New Zealanders who live in cities have little contact with those processes and the social and environmental considerations they create.
Ring of fire - New Zealand Geographic
History The night Tarawera awoke. When Mt Tarawera and the surrounding area erupted in the early hours of June 10, 1886, the explosion annihilated the world-famous Pink and White Terraces, smothered a vast swathe of countryside with ash and killed more than 100 people.
Did we put takahē in the wrong place? - New Zealand Geographic
Takahē famously came back from the dead. Once found around the country, they were hunted and predated to the point of invisibility, then presumed extinct for half a century before their rediscovery in Fiordland’s tussock-clad Murchison Mountains in 1948.