On December 10, 2024, a juvenile bottlenose dolphin was reported tangled in fishing line near Riverhead, in the upper reaches of the Waitematā Harbour. The dolphin couldn’t flex its tail properly, or dive, or chase fish. Its pod headed elsewhere. One larger dolphin stayed behind, and for the next month it stuck close, spending almost […]...
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 […]...
Howletts Hut lies in a sheltered hollow on Daphne Ridge, an offshoot of the main Ruāhine Range. An appealing hut with an orange roof and blue walls, it has fine views of Black Ridge as well as an expansive vista of the Hawke’s Bay hinterland. In summer, it’s a place of golden tussocks, khaki beech […]...
This issue’s cover posed a challenge: to present cannabis in a way that was recognisable, but that didn’t immediately call to mind a number of associations. An image of a cannabis leaf has layers of meaning attached to it. We wanted to make it possible for readers to take a fresh look. We are, as […]...
Is it true that deer act like moa in our forests, filling the ecological niche that moa left empty? Nope, says a new study by Landcare Research–Manaaki Whenua palaeobiologists Janet Wilmshurst and Jamie Wood. They compared prehistoric moa poo with modern-day deer poo, both from Daley’s Flat in the Dart River valley. Using plant pollen […]...
Every other week I go for a long run through bush close to our house in the Auckland suburb of Birkenhead. Much of it is dominated by towering macrocarpas, but as I scramble up the trail that runs along the edge of Duck Creek, the thin understorey of ponga becomes more dense and diverse, the […]...
Getting up before dawn, weathering rough seas, working during weekends and holidays and being scratched and pecked are not activities that today’s teenagers normally relish. But a team of students from Glenfield College in Auckland’s North Shore City accepted such conditions when they volunteered to help transfer endangered stitchbirds from Little Barrier Island to Tiritiri […]...
It was dark, loud and wet. You could be blown up, run over, or drowned. Or you could succumb to drunken misadventure. Some people took one look at the place and quit on the spot. Others stuck it out for years, hoping to build a better life for themselves. Their stories, recorded by oral historian […]...
