I'd like to start by thanking everyone who has responded to our We Need Your Help appeal. On Thursday we ticked over 1000 new subscriptions, putting us just 1000 short of our goal. Hundreds of readers ...

It seems like every day brings bad news. Our planet is on fire, or flooding, or infected, or in recession. It’s tiring. As if to add to the existential stress, the media sector is now forecasting its ...

What would the beach be without red-billed gulls? We may be about to find out. Two huge colonies have already gone under and the next biggest, in Kaikōura, is failing fast. In December 2023, ...

Medical care across New Zealand works on the following principle: get to the nearest hospital as fast as possible. But what if storms, flooding, landslides or earthquakes make that impossible? One ...

Where do young sea creatures spend their first weeks? What’s at the root of oceanic food chains? Kelp forests are to Aotearoa what coral reefs are to other marine ecosystems. Or they used to be. South ...

Two scientists mapping New Zealand’s light pollution have found our nights became a lot brighter over the past decade—and that most of our public lighting is now bright blue-white light-emitting ...

In a windy land, the most notorious gale is the Canterbury nor’wester. Born in the heart of the mountains, it accelerates down the great valleys east of the Main Divide and roars out across the plains ...

But information about the man behind the camera is scarce. And the one detail floating round the internet, that he was a visiting American photographer, is incorrect. Heinegg, articulate and ...

In spite of a widespread belief that their race and culture are extinct, Moriori people have survived on the Chatham Islands and are undergoing a cultural revival similar to that of their mainland ...

Legend has it that the first person to cross the Southern Alps from Hokitika to the Rakaia was a woman travelling alone. The pass she discovered became an important route for war parties and trade. In ...

Buried in the soil are the lattices and networks of another kingdom of life, one that’s inextricably connected with what grows above the ground. Fungi determine the types of trees that thrive, and ...

Don’t call them swamps. Bogs soak up and store more carbon than forests do, but when they’re drained and used for agriculture, that immense amount of carbon is slowly released. The entrance to one of ...