Kiwi are flightless birds endemic to New Zealand of the order Apterygiformes. The five extant species fall into the family Apterygidae and genus Apteryx. Approximately the size of a domestic chicken, kiwi are the smallest ratites.
The kākāpō, sometimes known as the owl parrot, is a species of large, nocturnal, ground-dwelling parrot of the superfamily Strigopoidea. It is endemic to New Zealand.
Fiordland National Park is a national park in the south-west corner of South Island of New Zealand. It is the largest of the 13 national parks in New Zealand, with an area covering 12,607 km2 (4,868 sq mi), and a major part of the Te Wāhipounamu a UNESCO World Heritage Site established in 1990. The park is administered by the Department of Conservation. The southern ranges of the Southern Alps cover most of Fiordland National Park, combined with the deep glacier-carved valleys.
The South Island takahē is a flightless swamphen indigenous to New Zealand and the largest living member of the rail family. It is often known by the abbreviated name takahē, which it shares with the recently extinct North Island takahē. The two takahē species are also known as notornis.
Tiritiri Matangi Island is located in the Hauraki Gulf of New Zealand, 3.4 km (2.1 mi) east of the Whangaparāoa Peninsula in the North Island and 30 km (19 mi) north east of Auckland. The 2.2 km2 (1 sq mi) island is an open nature reserve managed by the Supporters of Tiritiri Matangi Incorporated, under the supervision of the Department of Conservation and is noted for its bird life, including takahē, North Island kōkako and kiwi. It attracts between 30,000 and 32,000 visitors a year, the latter figure being the maximum allowed by the Auckland Conservation Management Strategy.
Mana Island is the smaller of two islands that lie off the southwest coast of the North Island of New Zealand. The name of the Island is an abbreviation of the Maori name Te Mana o Kupe, which means "The Mana of Kupe".
Chalky Island or Te Kākahu-o-Tamatea is an island in the southwest of New Zealand, and is part of Fiordland National Park. It lies at the entrance to Taiari / Chalky Inlet, next to Rakituma / Preservation Inlet, at the southwestern tip of the South Island, 10 kilometres (6 mi) northwest of Puysegur Point, 15 kilometres (9 mi) southeast of West Cape, and 140 kilometres (87 mi) west of Invercargill. Chalky Island is one of the predator-free islands that is part of the Fiordland Islands restoration programme. The programme's focus is to eradicate pests and translocate native species.
Anchor Island is an island in Dusky Sound in Fiordland.
Rotoroa Island is an island to the east of Waiheke Island in the Hauraki Gulf of New Zealand. It covers 82 hectares. The Salvation Army purchased it for £400 in 1908 from the Ruthe family to expand their alcohol and drug rehabilitation facility at nearby Pakatoa Island. Men were treated at Home Bay at Rotoroa, while women were treated at Pakatoa. This treatment facility was closed in 2005.
Rebecca Oppenheimer is an American astrophysicist and one of four curator/professors in the Department of Astrophysics at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Oppenheimer is a comparative exoplanetary scientist. She investigates planets orbiting stars other than the Sun. Her optics laboratory is the birthplace of a number of new astronomical instruments designed to tackle the problem of directly seeing and taking spectra of nearby solar systems with exoplanets and studying their composition, with the ultimate goal of finding life outside the solar system.
Pūkaha National Wildlife Centre is a captive breeding facility and visitor centre located in a protected forest area on State Highway 2 in New Zealand's Tararua district. It was formerly called Mount Bruce National Wildlife Centre, then Pūkaha / Mount Bruce National Wildlife Centre.
The birds of New Zealand evolved into an avifauna that included many endemic species found in no other country. As an island archipelago, New Zealand accumulated bird diversity, and when Captain James Cook arrived in the 1770s he noted that the bird song was deafening.
The New Zealand parrot family, Strigopidae, consists of at least three genera of parrots – Nestor, Strigops, the fossil Nelepsittacus, and probably the fossil Heracles. The genus Nestor consists of the kea, kākā, Norfolk kākā and Chatham kākā, while the genus Strigops contains the iconic kākāpō. All extant species are endemic to New Zealand. The species of the genus Nelepsittacus were endemics of the main islands, while the two extinct species of the genus Nestor were found at the nearby oceanic islands such as Chatham Island of New Zealand, and Norfolk Island and adjacent Phillip Island.
Project 1640 is a high contrast imaging project at Palomar Observatory. It seeks to image brown dwarfs and Jupiter-sized planets around nearby stars. Rebecca Oppenheimer, associate curator and chair of the Astrophysics Department at the American Museum of Natural History, is the principal investigator for the project.
The Te Kakahu skink is a critically endangered species of skink native to New Zealand. When discovered, the entire species was inhabiting a single patch of clifftop vegetation on Chalky Island in Fiordland National Park.
The Murchison Mountains are a group of mountains in Fiordland National Park in New Zealand. It is the location where the South Island takahē, a type of bird presumed extinct, was rediscovered in 1948. The highest mountain is Mount Lyall at 1,892 metres (6,207 ft).
The New Zealand Department of Conservation has introduced a number of animal and plant species to Mana Island, near Porirua, New Zealand, as part of an ecological restoration programme since taking over conservation management of the island in 1987. Some were reintroductions of species wiped out during years of agricultural use or the subsequent explosion in the number of house mice on the island. A pest control programme eliminated the mice by 1990 and many species have been introduced since. Notable successes include the spotted skink, Duvaucel's gecko and the flax weevil, which are now regarded as well established, and the yellow-crowned parakeet, which has been described as abundant and widespread. Attempts have been made to introduce several seabird species in what the Department of Conservation describes as "the world's most complex seabird translocation project"; results have been mixed.
The Fiordland Islands restoration programme is run by the New Zealand Department of Conservation. The purpose of the programme is to eradicate pests on key islands around Fiordland National Park, once the islands are considered predator free endangered native species will be translocated to the islands.
Sanctuary Mountain Maungatautari, is a protected natural area in Waikato Region, New Zealand where the biodiversity of 3,400 ha of forest is being restored. The sanctuary covers the mountain peak, Maungatautari.
