Tag Archives: National Geographic

Endangered, flightless bird returns to NZ mainland

Endangered, flightless bird returns to NZ mainland

The iconic and famously cheeky Kākāpō, a flightless bird indigenous to New Zealand, is returning to the nation’s largest main island thanks to conservation efforts by conservation groups, indigenous tribes, and central government. Kākāpō are…

Collaboration Saves the Kākāpō from Extinction

Collaboration Saves the Kākāpō from Extinction

“Kākāpō once lived throughout Aotearoa. Found nowhere else in the world, they have become a national icon, with their muppet-like faces and frequent silliness,” Pete McKenzie writes for National Geographic. But the birds, sometimes…

Christchurch Combines Architectural Charm with Art

Christchurch Combines Architectural Charm with Art

“Framed by the Pacific to the east and the snowy Southern Alps to the west, Ōtautahi Christchurch is the largest city on New Zealand’s South Island and nicknamed the Garden City for its green…

New Zealand First to Try Taxing Cows’ Gas Emissions

New Zealand First to Try Taxing Cows’ Gas Emissions

In a nation with seven times more livestock than people, taxing farmers for herds’ greenhouse gas emissions is a controversial proposal, Hicks Wogan reports for National Geographic. In October, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern unveiled a…

New Zealand Charts On Nat Geo Best Trip List

New Zealand Charts On Nat Geo Best Trip List

Looking for your next adventure? You’ll find it on National Geographic’s annual list of the world’s best destinations for travellers, and of the 25 breathtaking places and experiences listed, you’ll find New Zealand, with…

Meet Paralympic Cyclist and Adventurer Steve Bate

Meet Paralympic Cyclist and Adventurer Steve Bate

Having become the first person with visual impairment to scale El Capitan, New Zealand-born Steve Bate, 43, is no stranger to adventure. The Tokyo Paralympic Games are but one challenge on his horizon –…

Chunk of Ancient Supercontinent Found Under NZ

Chunk of Ancient Supercontinent Found Under NZ

As the California heat blazed outside in the summer of 2018, Rose Turnbull sat in the cool confines of a windowless basement sorting through grains of fine sand. A geologist based at New Zealand’s…

Visiting Emily Winkle’s Cornwall Gem Cherry Trees

Visiting Emily Winkle’s Cornwall Gem Cherry Trees

“Padstow, on the north Cornwall coast, has long been a food-lover’s haunt. And that’s largely thanks to Rick Stein, who opened The Seafood Restaurant here more than 40 years ago, and has since added…

Manawatāwhi’s Lonely Kaikōmako Gets Some Neighbours

Manawatāwhi’s Lonely Kaikōmako Gets Some Neighbours

After seven decades of cuttings, failures, plant enzymes, a little coaxing, and a Māori blessing, one of the world’s rarest trees – which lives on a tiny island 64km off the northern edge of…

National Geographic On An Epic Drive Through New Zealand

National Geographic On An Epic Drive Through New Zealand

“A nation of warmth and color” is revealed to National Geographic Traveler contributing editor Carrie Miller after an epic road trip from Bluff to Cape Reinga. The National Geographic Traveler feature runs 15 pages…

National Geographic Features the Whanganui River

National Geographic Features the Whanganui River

Swelled by myriad tributaries, the Whanganui River twists like an eel through mountainous country – part of it a national park – on its 289-km journey to the sea, reports Kennedy Warne, New…

Canterbury Makes National Geographic Best Trips List

Canterbury Makes National Geographic Best Trips List

New Zealand’s Canterbury Region has been featured on National Geographic’s annual Best Trips list as one of the destinations you must visit in 2019. “Kiwis call their scenic nation Godzone, short…

An Adventurer’s Perfect Day in Queenstown

An Adventurer’s Perfect Day in Queenstown

Kyle Mulinder, known as Bare Kiwi, provides National Geographic readers an authentic glimpse into his and his fiancée’s adventures around New Zealand. Mulinder is a self-taught photographer and filmmaker, who…

Tā moko Artist Taryn Beri Shares Capital Tips

Tā moko Artist Taryn Beri Shares Capital Tips

Taryn Beri is an independent tā moko practitioner in Wellington and a member of the Ngāti Toarangatira tribe. Beri shares the best sights, bites, and art in the capital city…

National Geographic to Feature Whanganui River

National Geographic to Feature Whanganui River

When the Whanganui River was given legal personhood Danish freelance photographer Mathias Svold was so intrigued by the headlines that he went to Washington DC in the United States to pitch a story for…

Prehistoric Toothless Whale Among Oldest of Its Kind

Prehistoric Toothless Whale Among Oldest of Its Kind

A fossil found in South Canterbury is now one of the earliest members of the filter-feeding family of behemoths known as baleen whales. Modern baleen whales include many of the world’s largest cetaceans, such…

Scientists Assess Surprise Status of Ross Ice Shelf

Scientists Assess Surprise Status of Ross Ice Shelf

New Zealand scientists have peered into one of the least-explored swaths of ocean on Earth, a vast region located off the coast of West Antarctica. It is locked beneath a crust of ice larger…

Robin Hammond Image Best Nat Geo Picture

Robin Hammond Image Best Nat Geo Picture

Documentary photographer New Zealand-born Robin Hammond’s image of Avery Jackson, a transgender child from Kansas City in the United States, has been selected as one of the National Geographic’s 57 best images of 2017. The…

Coffin Club Throws Glitter on Idea of Dying

Coffin Club Throws Glitter on Idea of Dying

The members of New Zealand’s quirky Coffin Clubs, which consist of senior citizens who seek comfort, community, and coffin-making – is gaining popularity among New Zealanders, as well as internationally. Coffin…

Where the Locals Go in Wellington

Where the Locals Go in Wellington

From boutique shopping to cable car rides and all the best food in between, the National Geographic finds out how Wellingtonians take advantage of the capital city. “Wellingtonians go where the wind takes them,” Carrie…

Earth Live With Phil Keoghan for Nat Geo

Earth Live With Phil Keoghan for Nat Geo

Phil Keoghan has seen the world for 29 seasons as host of The Amazing Race. But the New Zealander had never seen the world the way he did on last week’s two-hour National Geographic…

Cities for Food Lovers

Cities for Food Lovers

Wellington is featured in National Geographic’s “neighborhood guide to the best eats on (almost) every continent” as the best city for food lovers in Oceania.  Best Neighborhood for a Food Frenzy in Wellington: “Wellington’s…

Robin Hammond Trans Image on Cover of Nat Geo

Robin Hammond Trans Image on Cover of Nat Geo

New Zealand-born photojournalist Robin Hammond’s image of transgender girl Avery Jackson, 9, has made the cover of the January 2017 special issue of National Geographic magazine on the shifting landscape of gender. Avery, from Kansas…

Glowworm Cave in New Zealand

Glowworm Cave in New Zealand

Traveling duo Stoked for Saturday has captured an incredible video of glow-worms in New Zealand’s Waitomo Caves.” The travel bloggers shared how it all came together with National Geographic’s Sarah…

How NZ’s Glaciers Shaped the Origin of the Kiwi Bird

How NZ’s Glaciers Shaped the Origin of the Kiwi Bird

When the kiwi arrived in New Zealand several million years ago “it found few threats and plenty of opportunities.” “In the absence of mammals, its descendants gradually lost the ability to fly, as island…

Spiderways Plots with Helium Balloon Record-Breakers

Spiderways Plots with Helium Balloon Record-Breakers

New Zealand company Spidertracks, which specialises in airline tracking equipment, recently partnered with the pilots of helium-filled balloon expedition Two Eagles, enabling the American and Russian pair to set a world record. Spidertracks,…

Te Araroa Trail One of the World’s Dream Hikes

Te Araroa Trail One of the World’s Dream Hikes

Long-distance tramping route, New Zealand’s new 3000km Te Araroa Trail, is considered one of National Geographic’s best hikes in the world. This year, the publication asked 20 outdoor luminaries – from trail runners to CEOs…

Richard “Hannibal” Hayes Gives National Geographic Russia a NZ Tour

Richard “Hannibal” Hayes Gives National Geographic Russia a NZ Tour

Sir Richard “Hannibal” Hayes, legendary helicopter pilot, gave two National Geographic reporters from Russia the ride of their life as they explored New Zealand. Sir Richard is is probably New Zealand’s most legendary helicopter pilot…

Sirocco the Kakapo a Great Conservationist Spokesbird

Sirocco the Kakapo a Great Conservationist Spokesbird

Sirocco the kakapo is a great spokesbird to travel New Zealand and share the conservation message, according to James Russell from the University of Auckland, who recently met the hand-raised bird. “The kakapo is an…

Antarctica: No Ordinary Place, No Ordinary Assignment

Antarctica: No Ordinary Place, No Ordinary Assignment

Two applicant’s get a chance of a lifetime to document and discover Antarctica with the help of Air New Zealand. Follow the story of Jason Edwards – National Geographic…

People Come and Go but Te Wahipounamu Endures

People Come and Go but Te Wahipounamu Endures

“Te Wahipounamu, the place of jade. Since 1990 this southwestern edge of New Zealand has enjoyed World Heritage recognition for its four national parks and interconnecting tracts of conservation land,” Kennedy Warne writes for…

Tracing Maori Ancestry for Worldwide Family Tree

Tracing Maori Ancestry for Worldwide Family Tree

Over the past year, Gisborne’s Ngai Tamanuhiri has been participating in the National Geographic’s Genographic Project working closely with Oceania’s genographic principal investigator Lisa Matisoo-Smith who is helping the iwi learn more about their…

Photojournalist Awarded Grant for Condemned

Photojournalist Awarded Grant for Condemned

01 November 2013 – New Zealand photojournalist Robin Hammond, 38, is the recipient of this year’s W. Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography, a US$30,000 prize in support of his…

Arnett Features in New AP Vietnam War Book

Arnett Features in New AP Vietnam War Book

Distinguished New Zealand war correspondent, Pulitzer Prize-winning Peter Arnett is one of a number of well-known journalists whose text will be included in Vietnam: The Real War, a photographic history by the Associated Press,…

Call to Save the Diminishing Longfin

Call to Save the Diminishing Longfin

New Zealand longfin eels are the National Geographic’s “Freshwater Species of the Week.” The threatened creatures are New Zealand’s only endemic freshwater eel and are on a “slow path to extinction,” according to an…

One of the World’s Best Guided Tours

One of the World’s Best Guided Tours

Active Adventures New Zealand’s Five-Day ‘Kauri’ Essence of the North Island tour features in National Geographic Traveler’s eighth annual “50 of the World’s Best Guided Expeditions” list, which appears in the magazine’s May issue….

New Creatures from the Deep

New Creatures from the Deep

In a recent joint expedition between the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) and the University of Aberdeen, to one of the deepest parts of the Pacific Ocean, scientists turned up something…

River with Standing

River with Standing

In a framework agreement signed between the Crown and the Whanganui River, New Zealand’s third largest river will be recognized as a person when it comes to the law, much the way a company…

Notable Beauty

Notable Beauty

“New Zealand contains an impressive series of national parks and other wilderness areas that are famous for their exquisite natural beauty and abundant, and often unique, wildlife,” Brian Clark Howard of National Geographic News…

Windows to the Soul

Windows to the Soul

New Zealand’s blue-eyed triplefin fish is one of American National Geographic photographer Brian Skerry’s “amazing pictures from beneath the waves” featuring in the Daily Mail. The triplefin fish is commonly found around…

Kairuku Comes Alive

Kairuku Comes Alive

The full skeleton of an ancient penguin that roamed New Zealand 25 million years ago has been reconstructed by experts from the University of Otago and North Carolina State University. Standing about 1.3m tall,…

Streaking Star Trails

Streaking Star Trails

A long-exposure image of star trails streaking over Lake Tekapo features on the National Geographic website. The lake was one of the first sites designated as a Starlight Reserve as part of a UN-supported initiative to…

Channelling Ancestral Paths

Channelling Ancestral Paths

Sailors on the Pacific Voyagers project steered a fleet of seven ocean-voyaging traditional Polynesian sailing canoes or vaka moanas from New Zealand to San Francisco — guided only by the stars that once helped…

Coup for Moving Images

Coup for Moving Images

The Natural History New Zealand (NHNZ)’s archive sales arm has been chosen by National Geographic Channels Worldwide to represent its footage from the past 2 years. The National Geographic archive adds thousands…

Glacier Collapses

Glacier Collapses

A huge vertical slab calved off the front of New Zealand’s longest glacier, the Tasman Glacier, into Tasman Lake after the 6.3-magnitude quake hit Christchurch on 22 February. The chunk is estimated to have…

Censored views

Censored views

The work of New Zealand photographer and artist Bruce Connew features on the cover of the latest issue of UK literary magazine Granta (#105, Lost and Found, Spring 2009). Censored 2008 is a photographic artwork that…

Pekapeka Predecessors

Pekapeka Predecessors

New Zealand’s endangered lesser short-tailed bat descended from 20-million-year-old Australian relatives, new research has found. Scientists had long thought that the bat evolved its walking preference independently. Since the bat’s native habitat lacks predators…

Creators and Destroyers

Creators and Destroyers

The history and breathtaking landscape of New Zealand’s first national park, Tongariro (which dominates the middle of the North Island) is subject to an in-depth analysis by travel writer Mel White and photographer Stuart…

Not So Drowned Continent

Not So Drowned Continent

Fossils of an 18 million year old ancestor to the tuatara have been found outside of Saint Bathans, Otago, filling a huge void in the fossil record, and casting doubt on a widely held…

The Wild Edge

The Wild Edge

New Zealand’s dramatic scenery is the backdrop for an 11-day “fall” fashion shoot in the latest issue of National Geographic Adventure, which takes the writer/photographer and his models from Auckland to Te Anau. “This…

Newspaper Half Mast

Newspaper Half Mast

A homage to Sir Edmund Hillary has won this year’s best newspaper advertisement at the 2008 Caxton Awards in Australia picking up the top prize, the Quinlivan Black Award.  The Saatchi & Saatchi Australia…

Guardians surface in DC

Guardians surface in DC

Te Papa exhibition ‘Whales | Tohor?’ has opened at Washington DC’s National Geographic Museum. The exhibition features whale specimens including an 18-metre-long male sperm whale skeleton. The cultural significance of whales to the peoples…

Sea Urchin Reef Concert

Sea Urchin Reef Concert

Auckland University marine biologists Craig Radford and Andrew Jeffs have discovered that sea urchins are behind loud noises emanating from underwater around New Zealand reefs. The 20- to 30-decibel sound is caused by the…

Rodents Settle Debate

Rodents Settle Debate

The arrival of Pacific rats in New Zealand decides the debate about the settling of the country by Polynesians; the findings confirm that settlers arrived here some 1,000 years later than was previously thought….

Bridging the Gap

Bridging the Gap

On New Zealand’s Chatham Islands researchers have discovered the country’s oldest known bird fossils. The find  represents four new seabirds dating back some 65 million years when New Zealand separated from supercontinent, Gondwana. Excavation…

Tourism NZ Gets Googled

Tourism NZ Gets Googled

Tourism NZ has teamed up with Google to develop its own official ‘layer’ on Google Earth, in a world first for a tourism authority. Google Earth is a searchable tool for geographic information that combines satellite…