Tongariro is by far the most popular national park in the North Island, attracting tens of thousands of skiers, walkers and trampers every year. The park centres around three active volcanoes: Tongariro, Ngauruhoe and Ruapehu, all of which are considered by local Maori to be sacred ancestors. In 1887 the chief of the local iwi Ngati […]...
Robotic in form and startlingly efficient en masse, ants have outlived the dinosaurs and now scuttle over every major landmass but Antarctica. Humans can learn a lot from these diminutive critters, which communicate using cocktails of exotic pheromones, expeditiously divide labour among thousands, and silently conduct their small and significant lives for the greater good—of the colony and their immediate […]...
Flora Feltham wrote an early version of our cover story when she was living on Wellington’s predator-free reserve Mana Island with her husband, then a DOC ranger. The couple spent two years on the island, often alone, spanning Feltham’s first pregnancy and 10 months of their baby’s life. An incredible honour, she says, but it […]...
Seafood is healthy and the world wants more. Too bad that most wild fisheries are overfished and collapsing. Over the last few decades, aquaculture has begun to offer a solution to this difficulty, but it’s not a solution that wins universal acclaim. In New Zealand, the black floats that mark mussel farms (above)—our main form […]...
As 2006 came to an end, stories of record warmth around the world contrasted strongly with the cold temperatures New Zealand experienced in December. Averaged over the whole country, the month was 1.9°C below the long-term average. Although nationwide it was not the coldest December on record—December 2004, for example, was 0.3°C colder again—many places […]...
