Forest & Bird

🦎✨ The Critter of the Week is the ranger dragonfly, or Procordulia smithii!    Next week is World Ranger Day (July 31), so we’re dedicating this week’s critter to the rangers -– both the human and insect kind! 🧡   Conservation rangers are the unsung heroes of our wild places…

📣 Five Wee Pūteketeke – the children’s picture book by Forest & Bird chief executive Nicola Toki to celebrate the 2023 Bird of the Year – has just been shortlisted for the 2025 PANZ Book Design Awards in the Scholastic New Zealand Award for Best Children’s Book category 🎉…

Forest & Bird’s GM of Advocacy Richard Capie explains how the Government’s new fast-track law has stripped New Zealanders of their right to speak up for the places they love.  Denniston Plateau is conservation land – home to ancient forests, rare wildlife, and headwater streams…

🦇 Meet the pekapeka-tou-roa long-tailed bat – one of our only two native land mammals! Weighing just 10 grams, as much as a $2 coin, these tiny legends can fly up to 60km/h and travel 20km in a night.  They echolocate like dolphins, snack on bugs, and raise their babies in…

Discovered during the 2012 Denniston Bioblitz, this moth was named after Forest & Bird ran a public competition, where 'the Avatar moth' was selected, because its home, like the alien forest in Avatar, is under threat from mining.  🦋️ The moth lives most of its life hidden…

🌊 “It’s the trawling that’s turned thriving [ocean] ecosystems into lifeless mud.” – Bianca Ranson, Forest & Bird. Forest & Bird is standing with the Hauraki Gulf Alliance @LegaSea_NZ @GreenpeaceNZ on the deck of the Rainbow Warrior, calling for a complete ban on bottom…

Our miromiro tomtit is laced up and locked in supporting the Wellington Phoenix as they take on Wrexham FC! This small bird with big pride is no stranger to backing a team that punches above its weight. Wrexham may have the red carpet, but we’ve got the forest floor! Phoenix are…

Lurking 7km below the ocean's surface, in one of the most extreme environments on Earth, lives this week's Critter Of The Week, the supergiant amphipod, or Alicella gigantea! 🌊    This is a true deep-sea heavyweight, reaching up to 34cm long – about as big as a loaf of bread 🍞…

🌿 After another wave of heavy rain and flooding hit already vulnerable communities at the top of Te Wai Pounamu the South Island, Forest & Bird believes that nature can help with a solution – but it needs Government support. We are calling on the Government to develop a…

When mining companies say they can “put the landscape back” – don’t believe it.  Conservation photographer and caver Neil Silverwood shares his deep personal connection to the Denniston Plateau – and why this landscape must not be sacrificed.   The plateau is one of the most…

Everyone loves a good underbird story. For Bird of the Year 2025, our 20th year of feathered festivities, let’s champion the quiet achievers, the oddballs, and the unsung heroes. It’s time to ruffle some feathers and rewrite the pecking order.    🐦 How about the sharply-dressed…

💚It’s incredibly heartwarming news to have pukupuku little spotted kiwi rediscovered by DOC in the West Coast’s Adams Wilderness Area – after 50 years without a trace on New Zealand’s mainland.   This is one of the most miraculous conservation moments since the takahē was found…