For eight years, Kiwi photographers have gathered the best images of our environment and society and submitted them to expert judgment and public scrutiny in the New Zealand Geographic Photographer of ...

Aotearoa couldn’t be further from the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but social media and global news make the war all too close for the many New Zealanders who have roots in the region. For Vika ...

Grebes are an ancient group of diving birds, quite unrelated to ducks and swans. The southern, or Australasian, crested grebe is one of New Zealand’s least known aquatic birds, a secretive but ...

One day in 1995, Rangi Matamua went to his grandfather Jim Moses (Timi Rāwiri Matamua) and asked the older man what he knew about Matariki, the dawn rising of the constellation Pleiades. He knew it ...

In the late 19th century, news of a strange antipodean bird with beautiful tail feathers, orange wattles, and a long curved beak spread around the British Empire. To Māori, it was a tapu bird—a sacred ...

Chatham Islanders treasure their independence, but they have been forced to rely on the government to survive. Can they find a path to a self-sufficient economy? It can be hard to appreciate how far ...

Our colonisers sent us bumble­bees, and now they want them back. The extinction of the short-haired bumblebee (Bombus subterraneus) in England has prompted conservation groups to reinstate the species ...

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 ...

Bang in the middle of the Maniototo Plain is a place called Wedderburn. Little more than a sweep of highway on a wide-open Central Otago landscape, Wedderburn barely makes it on to most road maps, yet ...

One hundred years since its inception, Te Aho o Te Kura Pounamu/the Correspondence School has broadened its scope to become a safety net: a place for kids who are bullied, anxious, or profoundly out ...

Offering a kea’s-eye view of the country around Haast Pass, Brewster Hut sits about a kilometre vertically above the Haast Highway and 300 metres above the bushline at an altitude of 1450 metres.

Powerful waves, jagged rocks, black sand and spectacular scenery. Piha, on Auckland’s west coast, is a magnet for beachgoers with a taste for the dramatic. But the currents are treacherous, and each ...