The bittern’s eerie, booming call sounds like a lament, a tangi ringing across the marshes. Now, the birds themselves are in trouble. A bittern’s mottled brown and beige plumage helps it blend into ...

You may have seen we ran a poll for readers to help us with our decision on the cover of the latest issue—an electric blue freshwater crayfish, or a gnarled bonsai tree. The bonsai won, and ever since ...

This afternoon I watched as members of the public streamed through the atrium in Britomart, downtown Auckland, clutching boxes of sushi or staring into the abyss of their mobile phones. They would ...

This week I've had the pleasure of being in Fiji to welcome sailors participating in Citizens of the Sea—the ocean data programme we launched with Cawthron Institute in May. To date they have ...

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, ...

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 ...

The wall went up in 1964. It didn’t go up very far, mind you—1.4 metres of it was under the ground, with only about 50 centimetres sticking out the top. But Frank Evison, the prominent geophysicist ...

The invasive seaweed Caulerpa brachypus was discovered in New Zealand just over a year ago, and it promises to ruin everything. On Aotea/Great Barrier Island, people are sacrificing their way of life ...

Six parrot species are set to be banned in the Auckland region due to the dangers they pose to native wildlife. Is this fair? The bird watches me with an inquisitive eye. She’s huge, nearly a metre ...