Boiling water and the stench of sulphur hardly seem a combination conducive to life, yet some bacteria thrive in such hostile environments. Biologists are beginning to think that the first life forms ...

The planting of Russell lupins as sheep feed in the Canterbury high country is triggering a clash between farming and conservation values. In early summer, photographers jostle for space on the ...

Gaza, Beetle, Lily and Jaq, Inky, Tootle, Shrek and Skippy—every town and community has them. They style themselves as ordinary people but their lives and service are anything but ordinary. Unpaid and ...

Nineteenth-century photographer John McGarrigle is something of an enigma. A feisty, litigious man who tried his hand at farming, gold speculation and (more than once) the liquor trade, he left few ...

Here we are—a nation of parents, grandparents and children all in the same boat, together at home. He waka eke noa. Every day of the lock-down we will post a story or video and set of activities that ...

A forest is a place of peace. We go there to soak up the stillness, the quietude. But even the most Zen of gardens is in fact a frenetic trading floor, abuzz with an exchange of commodities and ...

Hatched in rivers, mayflies rise to the surface and unfurl new wings, the final phase of their precarious and astonishing lifecycle. At dusk, on the upper Waiau River under the swingbridge entrance to ...

New Zealand has only one endemic gull, the tarāpuka, and it’s more endangered than the takahē, the hoiho and all five species of kiwi. Its survival depends on the preservation of the South Island’s ...

Hailing from Australia, where it is most common in Melbourne, the Gisborne cockroach was first recorded in Gisborne in the 1960s, but is thought to have arrived earlier as it was noticed in Auckland ...

In January, 2001, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its four-yearly update on what the climate has been doing and what is likely to happen next. It found that over the past ...

Early Development of nuclear-pow­ered thermal stations was driven by rising demand for electricity and the need for security of supply. The oil crisis of the early 1970s moved France and some other ...

Pumice and ash, scoria and grit-the harsh layers of pulverised volcanic refuse that form Rangipo Dessert east of Mount Ruapehu-may offer little succour to plants, but from such unpromising materials ...