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Innovation articles

  1. Our contribution to environmental reporting for Aotearoa New Zealand – the story so far

    Since 2015, research organisations across New Zealand have contributed to a growing national cache of environmental reporting data under the 2015 Environmental Reporting Act, which brought into existence the requirement for cyclic national environmental ‘domain’ reports. This means the Ministry for ...

  2. Regenerative agriculture – what does it mean for New Zealand?

    Regenerative agriculture has been proposed as a solution for some of New Zealand’s most acute challenges. Advocates suggest it can improve the health of our waterways, reduce topsoil loss, offer resilience to drought, add value to primary exports, and improve the pervasive well-being crisis among ru...

  3. Technology tracking tōrea

    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...

  4. 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...

  5. 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...

  6. 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 ...

  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. Fake clues: using misinformation about odour to protect rare bird species

    Mammalian predators primarily rely on smell as their main cue, enabling them to detect food from a distance. Smell is – usually – a reliable strategy for locating food.

  10. New biocontrol tools showing promise

    Introduced Vespula wasps – the German wasp (Vespula germanica) and the common wasp (V. vulgaris) – are generalist predators that attack a wide variety of arthropods, including honeybees, butterflies, flies, and spiders. Where they are invasive, these wasps have detrimental effects on normal ecosyste...

  11. DNA sequencing for better identification of fungi

    It is an exciting time to be a fungal taxonomist (someone who specialises in the identification and classification of fungi) according to Dr Peter Johnston, one of Manaaki Whenua’s experts in the discipline.

  12. Rats with chips: how microchipped rats are helping scientists to protect our native birds

    Some of the highest rat densities ever measured on the New Zealand mainland are being recorded in a study run by Manaaki Whenua at Lake Alabaster in Fiordland as part of the 5-year ‘More Birds in the Bush’ MBIE Endeavour research programme. The study, carried out in collaboration with DOC, is showin...

  13. International recognition for New Zealand’s endangered fungi

    Established in 1964, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species (www. iucnredlist.org) is a critical indicator of the health of the world’s biodiversity and the world’s most comprehensive information source on the global conservation status of animal, fu...

  14. A research partnership gives rise to a special mātauranga Māori journal issue

    During the year researchers at Manaaki Whenua contributed to the first special issue of the [New Zealand Journal of Ecology], focusing on ātauranga Māori (Māori knowledge).

  15. Pacific Seeds for Life

    In March 2020 the New Zealand and Australian governments approved funding for the Pacific Seeds for Life (PS4L) project, in partnership with the Pacific Community (SPC) Land Resources Division. Both Australia and New Zealand are members of the SPC.

  16. Gut flora could hold key to kiwi survival

    Brown kiwi ([Apteryx mantelli]) are highly vulnerable to extinction in the wild, with populations currently in serious decline. Even though ongoing conservation efforts such as Operation Nest Egg have increased their survival rate, the stress of captivity and the high density of chicks
    co-habiting s...

  17. Eradicating the last 5%

    New Zealand is a world leader in controlling and, in some areas, eradicating invasive mammalian predators. Much of that innovation has been in developing and deploying devices (e.g. traps, bait delivery), but those devices can only achieve complete eradication if all individuals in the target popula...

  18. Beyond Myrtle Rust – complex responses needed to solve complex problems

    Collaboration and communication are the key to success in solving some of our most complex environmental problems. The Beyond Myrtle Rust (BMR) programme, a 5-year effort funded by MBIE and hosted by Manaaki Whenua, is pulling together multiple experts from several institutions while working with st...

  19. Most-wanted predator’s DNA sequenced

    Assembled by teams of New Zealand scientists working with international collaborators, the complete genome of the stoat (Mustela erminea) is now available to researchers at the US-based National Center for Biotechnology Information genome database, hard on the heels of the ship rat genome.

  20. Land Cover Database v5 launched in 2020

    In the past 6 years more than half a million hectares of New Zealand’s land cover has changed, according to the latest version of New Zealand’s Land Cover Database (LCDB, version 5), launched in January 2020. Researchers say it is one of the biggest shifts in land cover since the first Land Cover Da...