Earth’s protective ozone shield is being destroyed by two processes: the slow eating away of ozone by chlorine around the globe, and dramatic holes that appear over Antarctica every spring....
Although New Zealand’s slice of the great white south is three times the size of the rest of the country, for most of us the Ross Dependency is an unknown—a blank space in the atlas of our images and experiences. Auckland writer Mark Scott recently voyaged south to try and fill in some of the gaps....
On Sunday, November 11, 1990, 36 fragile solar-powered vehicles left Darwin to travel 3000km across the centre of Australia to Adelaide in a race described by the organisers as “the event of the future”—the World Solar Challenge. Among the challengers was a group of Kiwis trying out their solar wings....
Once dug in their thousands by seafood lovers throughout the country, New Zealand’s “national shellfish” has fallen upon hard times lately. Glenys Stace investigates the demise of a delicacy....
Fire racing through scrub caused about fifty residents to flee their homes in the Christchurch suburb of Cashmere on December 14 last year, pausing only to rescue family photos and pets. One schoolboy, David Rees, had to save a goat tethered in the path of the flames It had been bought four years before to […]...
As the late summer sky darkens, the stretch of the Milky Way, running from the constellation Norma, through the Southern Cross and on to Canis Major and Orion, swings into view. The central section of this band is the one-time giant constellation Argo Navis, so named by the Greeks after the ship Argo which carried […]...
There used to be just CNG, LPG and the odd whiff of biogas from some of the more committed organic vegetarian-whole earth-green types. Now there is a new member of the gas club: LFG (landfill gas), emanating from that august body, the ARC (Auckland Regional Council). In fact, I exaggerate. LFG has been around longer […]...
There is nothing unusual about making an effort to get to know the neighbours when moving into a new area, unless you happen to have the interests and devotion of Dr Willy Kuschel, a research associate with the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research in Auckland. Dr Kuschel took up a position as an insect […]...
Through most of their long history, the people of Great Barrier have fought isolation and scratched out a hard-won livelihood. Now, fast boats and automatic telephones are threatening to change forever a diverse community shaped by its past....
