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2021 Newsletters

  1. A moth to a flame: species survival against the odds

    On 29 August 2020, a fire began near the Pūkaki Scientific Reserve in the South Island’s Mackenzie district. Fuelled by wilding pines, the fire burned through more than 3,000 hectares of drought-dry land on the shore of Lake Pūkaki, and destroyed most of the reserve.

  2. Getting to the root causes of soil erosion using high-res remote sensing

    Soil erosion processes are notably active in New Zealand: our steep slopes, generally weak sedimentary rocks, and high annual rainfall totals including frequent large rainfall events, underscored by a history of vegetation clearance for agriculture, mean that around 192 million tonnes of soil on agr...

  3. Celebrating our achievements

    Zhi-Qiang Zhang has significantly advanced global taxonomy by founding and leading two of the largest international journals in biodiversity research: Zootaxa and Phytotaxa. Zhi-Qiang is a worldleading authority on the systematics and ecology of mites and has made outstanding global contributions to...

  4. Towards a national strategy for soil

    Why a soil strategy? After all, we have spent a few decades now in the absence of a strategic direction. As often plays out, urgency of fundamental information occurs during times of policy or management decisions being made. However, once the decision is made, the pressure goes off and the perceive...

  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.