Ever since getting stuck in a narrow cave “squeeze” when he was 16, Neil Silverwood has trembled at the thought of tight spaces. And yet he keeps going back into some of New Zealand’s deepest and most ...

The fight to eradicate the yellow-legged hornet involves poison-puffing spears, spacesuits, Christmas tinsel, hectic chases through the bush—and an unflagging conviction that this time, we really ...

Waka ama came over the Pacific with the people who became Māori. In this new land, the people found tōtara, kauri—trees big ...

No account of statistics or arms-length analysis of policy can quite get to the truth of the matter: that the criminal justice system is operated by people, upon people.” The Valley is the long view, ...

Many women, says McConnochie, are worried about slowing others down or being left behind on group trips. Alone, those ...

Does an elephant really need to be that massive? Why aren’t there any giant insects? Why did animals in New Zealand evolve to be either unusually large or unusually small? Why do crayfish keep growing ...

For decades, the southern New Zealand dotterel had been disappearing, bird after bird killed on the nest, mostly by feral ...

Now is the time of mushrooms. In autumn, fungi are a form of wildlife that you barely have to go any distance to see—but you ...

For decades, an image of Robert’s hand was thought to be the oldest surviving x-ray in the country. But last year, a scan of a native frog in Canterbury Museum was pinned to 1896, pipping Robert by ...

A species of native fungi has been photographed glowing with bioluminescence – a fact that has previously eluded mycologists. A Mycena roseoflava was recently found during the annual “fungal foray” on ...

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 ...

Emperor penguins spend part of the year huddled together on the ice, keeping eggs and then chicks warm. But where do they go once breeding season is over? This week we’re starting a mini rerun of ...