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Measuring body length of a tōrea (South Island pied oystercatcher)

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 acro...

Tītīpounamu (rifleman)

Restoring New Zealand birdscapes

Manaaki Whenua researchers are combining ambitious field-based research and computer modelling to derive evidence-based conservation mana...

Kākā

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 dif...

Banding bird

Te Mana o te Taiao is about making a collective difference

Manaaki Whenua researchers are working across agencies, and with kaitiaki iwi, community groups and landowners to gather as much species ...

  1. 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...

  2. A range of work in wetland biodiversity

    Wetlands are important ecosystems for their biodiversity, cultural, and recreational values as well as their key role in carbon storage. However, wetlands are also ecosystems under threat. In New Zealand, wetlands have declined by ~90%, mostly over the past 200 years, from around 10% to just ~1% of ...

  3. 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...

  4. 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.

  5. Snow business: black carbon, red algae, and future glacier survival

    In early 2020, large parts of eastern Australia burned. Bushfires turned the land black, the skies orange, and the sun red. In New Zealand, 2,000 km away, ash from the fires also coated our glaciers and snow-capped mountains, turning them a shade of caramel.

  6. Fukushima: the whole picture from atmosphere to ocean

    A Manaaki Whenua expert in landwater interactions has been involved in the most comprehensive review to date of the impact from Japan’s Fukushima nuclear disaster on the terrestrial environment.

  7. Changes in the rural hazardscape

    New Zealand is a highly dynamic, multihazard environment, including coastal, riverine, and seismic landscape hazards. Manaaki Whenua’s social scientists are currently building a wide body of knowledge about the importance of co-creating knowledge about disaster response, allowing effective knowledge...

  8. He matawara o mua – Taking account of shifting ecological baselines

    Global biodiversity losses due to human activities have accelerated more in the past 50 years than at any time in human history. Intertwined with this rapid decline is the loss of knowledge about past environmental conditions and species abundances. This loss threatens how the next generation percei...

  9. Reducing the mismatches between conservation research and practice

    Conservation research and practice have traditionally been viewed as taking a linear pathway, where scientific evidence informs people’s action on the ground. However, in practice, knowledge generation may not lead directly to knowledge use. Mismatches exist between research and practice that may li...

  10. Celebrating our achievements

    Sandra Larovel

    Sandra Lavorel is among a trio of international researchers awarded the BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Ecology and Conservation. Sandra, and fellow ecologists Mark Westoby (Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia) and Sandra Díaz (National University of Córdoba, Argentina), w...
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