Endemic to New Zealand, the Nelson cave spider has the largest leg span among New Zealand spiders—up to 130 millimetres, with its body only 24 millimetres. The first two pairs of legs each have a long ...

How did I ever get caught in a trap like this? No way up and certainly no way to climb back down. A wall of vertical granite fell away beneath my feet and gravity, so deftly defied until now, returned ...

Here we are—a nation of parents, grandparents and children all in the same boat, together at home. He waka eke noa. Every day of the lock-down we will post a story or video and set of activities that ...

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 ...

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 ...

One of the rarest ecologies in the world is hiding in plain sight, in the centre of the most central suburb of the largest city in New Zealand. Of more than 5000 hectares of rock forest that once ...

Plantations of exotic timber trees, especially pines, are looked on with disdain by many as alien monocultures, an unpleasant accommodation necessary to protect precious indigenous forests from the ...

In inky darkness, Philip Rush dived from the three-metre rigid inflatable and touched a hand to Dog Rock, at the southwest extremity of Kapiti Island. This formality dispensed with, he turned and ...

The Mokohinau stag beetle is one of the world’s most endangered species, occupying less than an acre of scrub on a rocky tower in the middle of the ocean. Its habitat is so precarious that Auckland ...

Much of New Zealand’s coastal property has an expiry date, with its value set to be wiped off the ledger in as little as nine years’ time, well before sea levels rise and coastlines are redrawn. What ...

The Cape Reinga-Spirits Bay region of the Far North has great significance for Māori. According to Māori mythology, when the spirits of the dead return to Hawaiki, the homeland of their ancestors, ...

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 ...