Some, like clownfish, swap when there’s a gap in the social order. Others switch when they get to a certain size, when they’re looking for a mate, when the weather is hot, when the environment is ...

Willows can stop a river flooding a farm. Or they can turn a river dark and mean. Trying to control them, we’re realising, has always been a fool’s game. But we can’t stop now. For centuries, the ...

For a long time it was a good place to be an endangered skink—a vertical sheet of rock at the head of Milford Sound/Piopiotahi, too snowy and steep for mice to bother with. But as the climate warms, ...

“General surgery has… drama, agitation, mystery, and the ability to save a life,” she writes. “It was a beautiful mélange of people, pathology, humour, madness, recovery, and loss.” She writes about ...

Gibson’s and Antipodean albatrosses are citizens of no one nation. They are ocean birds, living on the wind and waves, travelling massive distances, passing back and forth over the high seas and the ...

Kina numbers have exploded as we’ve eaten too many of their predators – like big snapper and crayfish – that usually keep them in check. The urchins munch through kelp and seaweed, leaving bare rock ...

Hundreds of snapper are floating in the sea off Auckland, and are washing up dead or dying on beaches off the Hauraki Gulf. Fisheries New Zealand is warning the public not to eat the fish “for safety ...

More than 50,000 people gathered at Waitangi on February 6, 2024—one of the largest attendances on record. What brought them? Driving south on State Highway 1 in the middle of the night, the crescent ...

The release of Disney’s Moana in te reo was a landmark for Māori language revitalisation. As that rebirth gathers steam, mita, or dialects are returning to the fore. When The Lion King Reo Māori hit ...

Judges have selected 69 images from more than 6000 entries that tell the story of an exceptional year in Aotearoa. Select five of your favourites to vote in the Ockham Residential People’s Choice ...

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 ...