On the West Coast Beauty Doesn’t Stop
Though now only partially open to the public owing to a slip, the 55.7km Paparoa Track on the West Coast is the first addition to the Great Walks in 25 years. Sebastian Modak, The…
Tag Archives: Department of Conservation
Record-Breaking Breeding Season for the Kākāpō
The world’s fattest species of parrot, the kākāpō, has had a record-breaking breeding season in New Zealand, with scientists saying the fortunes of the critically-endangered bird are finally turning around. There are only 147 adult…
Frisky Spokesbird Sirocco Comes out of Hiding
Sirocco, New Zealand’s superstar kakapo, is alive and well in Fiordland, according to the Department of Conservation. The conservation ‘spokesbird’ shot to fame after he got a bit too friendly…
Kakapo Conservationists Celebrate Breeding Success
The kakapo, the world’s heaviest parrot, a critically endangered bird that only lives in a remote part of New Zealand, has had its most successful breeding season since conservation efforts began more than two…
Air New Zealand & Department of Conservation Team Up
Have a look at Air New Zealand team up with the Department of Conservation and head to the great outdoors to help make sure New Zealand continues to be…
Rare Baby Kiwi Named Nutter – “a Ball of Fluff With a Beak”
A rare baby kiwi has been born at the West Coast Wildlife Centre in Franz Josef on New Zealand’s South Island. The baby kiwi named Nutter, described as “90 per cent fluff and 10…
New Zealand Scales up Kiwi Breeding Programmes
New Zealand will breed more of the iconic native kiwi in a bid to stop its course towards extinction in the wild, Conservation Minister Maggie Barry has said. The national bird is facing a crisis,…
Monocle’s Forecast for NZ in 2015
There are three challenges New Zealand faces in 2015, according to Monocle magazine. Much of the success of Prime Minister John Key, who led the National party to a landslide in the September elections,…
Egg of Bird Thought Extinct for More than a Century Found in NZ
For the first time, New Zealand scientists say they have found an egg on Little Barrier Island of an endangered bird that had been presumed extinct for more than a century. The storm petrel is…
Sneaky Egg Swap Boosts Kokako Population
The Department of Conservation (DOC) are working hard to save the endangered North Island kokako, using sleight of hand to trick nesting mothers into incubating the eggs of kokako from other areas to help…
Penguin Paradise
Farmer Francis Helps and his wife Shireen have converted much of their Banks Peninsula land into a safe haven for one of the word’s smallest penguins, the rare white-flippered penguin, also known as korora….
Voyage of Discovery
Wellington science historian and writer Rebecca Priestley is blogging about her trip to the Kermadec Islands on the HNZMS Canterbury for the Scientific American. “We’re sailing north along a chain of underwater…
Puttin’ ‘Em Back in the Trees
A mammoth conservation effort stretching back decades is offering hope for one of the world’s rarest birds, the kakapo, lifting its numbers from about 50 in 1990 to 126 this year. The kakapo was…
Birds In Paradise
About an hour from downtown Wellington is Kapiti Island, one of New Zealand’s most successful nature reserves and a model for wildlife and flora conservation. Award-winning journalist Jill Robinson takes a day-trip there. “On…
Sharks on Holidays
Scientists from the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA), Department of Conservation (DOC), and University of Auckland have discovered that the great white shark, can travel thousands of kilometres on seasonal migrations,…
Mourning Moko
Tauranga’s favourite dolphin Moko has been found dead on an island off the coast of the port city. Department of Conservation area manager Andrew Baucke said Moko’s death was a sad loss. “The way…
Looking for the Lost
Veteran polar expedition leader New Zealander Rob McCallum is leading the search to find the submerged seaplane wreck which had been carrying Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen to the Arctic island of Spitsbergen in 1928….
Kiwi Burger?
“If you were in a position where every family could eat kiwi for lunch, then you would have solved the problem, wouldn’t you,” says John Wamsley, head of the private Environmental Sanctuaries group. But, “our aim…
Avian Aphrodisiac
There are only 62 Kakapo in the world, and they don’t always seem that interested in making more. DOC scientists, hoping to see some action from the feather fellows, have concocted a special kind of muesli…
