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British Soldier Lichen, Cladonia cristatella, lichen growing my Lake Matheson in the Westland Tai Poutini National Park.

What effects must be avoided, remediated or mitigated to maintain indigenous biodiversity?

New Zealand’s indigenous biodiversity is unique and complex, and it is declining and threatened. People and companies are often uncertain...

Kererū – New Zealand pigeon - [Hemiphaga novaeseelandiae]

Life history traits explain vulnerability of endemic forest birds and predict recovery after predator suppression

New modelling has disentangled the limiting effects of predation, forest area, and food availability to predict the outcomes we can expec...

IMG 0003 v3

Using science to communicate the benefits of wilding conifer control

Manaaki Whenua ecologist Norm Mason, with the support of the New Zealand Wilding Conifer Group, ran a series of workshops in the southern...

Bellbird - GBS report cover. Image:Julie Gould

State of New Zealand Garden Birds 2020 | Te āhua o ngā manu o te kāri i Aotearoa

Numbers of some native and introduced garden bird species are increasing across New Zealand. This is good news for our urban environments...

  1. Cook Islands travel bubble a welcome opening for weed-busting beetles

    A consignment of African tulip tree flea beetles has resumed its interrupted journey to Rarotonga and the beetles have started on their weed-busting work.

  2. Coupled systems key to successful climate change outcomes

    Treating climate, biodiversity and human society as coupled systems will be key to successfully mitigate the effects of climate change.

  3. New research highlights the work of Māori in Antarctica

    Over the last 200 years, Antarctic narratives have been of those carried out by predominantly European male explorers. However, a research project led by Manaaki Whenua – Landcare Research and Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu researchers looked into the connection of Māori with Antarctica to better document a...

  4. Reconstructing the past from poop: now we know what the little bush moa ate

    Knowledge of the diets of New Zealand's extinct moa comes from careful analysis of moa coprolites (fossilised poop) and gizzard contents. Moa coprolites and gizzard contents can be dissected and analysed under the microscope or using DNA identification techniques to decipher what the birds ate. The ...

  5. Where do birds go to? Movements that link landscapes

    Designing conservation management strategies to protect native manu is especially challenging for mobile species, which range widely across
    New Zealand and face multiple threats in different places and at different times. Researchers face additional technical challenges in building
    knowledge of wher...

  6. Restoring New Zealand birdscapes

    Manaaki Whenua researchers are combining ambitious field-based research and computer modelling to derive evidence-based conservation management strategies that agencies, ecosanctuaries and farmers can all use to help native birds thrive, in montane native forests, on farms, and in coastal harbours a...

  7. Backpacking kākā and miromiro on the move

    Using kākā and miromiro as case studies, Neil Fitzgerald and John Innes hope to improve native bird abundance and connectivity in the different context of fragmented native forests of the North Island. In collaboration with Department of Conservation scientists, 11 kākā were tagged at sites near Ham...

  8. Jumping the fence: a new inventory of New Zealand’s naturalised flora

    New Zealand is one of the world’s top plant biodiversity hotspots. Because of historical isolation, many of its native plant species are endemic – found nowhere else. However, in the past two centuries an almost equivalent number of plant species in New Zealand have become naturalised – many were br...

  9. Turning the next page on predator control in New Zealand

    The story, so far, is well-known. Introductions of small mammals to New Zealand have caused catastrophic losses of indigenous biota owing to
    predation, browsing, and competition for shared resources. Our deeply endemic bird species, highly adapted to New Zealand’s pre-predator
    environments, are part...

  10. When hunters become the hunted

    Manaaki Whenua’s research capabilities are in demand worldwide, even in the Southern Atlantic Ocean where mice are decimating seabirds on remote Gough Island.
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