The brown rat, also known as the common rat, street rat, sewer rat, wharf rat, Hanover rat, Norway rat and Norwegian rat, is a widespread species of common rat. One of the largest muroids, it is a brown or grey rodent with a head and body length of up to 28 cm (11 in) long, and a tail slightly shorter than that. It weighs between 140 and 500 g. Thought to have originated in northern China and neighbouring areas, this rodent has now spread to all continents except Antarctica, and is the dominant rat in Europe and much of North America. With rare exceptions, the brown rat lives wherever humans live, particularly in urban areas.
Witi Tame Ihimaera-Smiler is a New Zealand author. Raised in the small town of Waituhi, he decided to become a writer as a teenager after being convinced that Māori people were ignored or mischaracterised in literature. He was the first Māori writer to publish a collection of short stories, with Pounamu, Pounamu (1972), and the first to publish a novel, with Tangi (1973). After his early works he took a ten-year break from writing, during which he focused on editing an anthology of Māori writing in English.
Auckland Island is the main island of the eponymous uninhabited archipelago in the Pacific Ocean. It is part of the New Zealand subantarctic area. It is inscribed in the UNESCO World Heritage list together with the other New Zealand Subantarctic Islands in the region.
Christian Karlson "Karl" Stead is a New Zealand writer whose works include novels, poetry, short stories, and literary criticism. He is one of New Zealand's most well-known and internationally celebrated writers.
This is a timeline of environmental history of New Zealand. It includes notable events affecting the natural environment of New Zealand as a result of human activity.
The Polynesian rat, Pacific rat or little rat, known to the Māori as kiore, is the third most widespread species of rat in the world behind the brown rat and black rat. The Polynesian rat originated in Southeast Asia, and like its relatives has become widespread, migrating to most of Polynesia, including New Zealand, Easter Island, and Hawaii. It shares high adaptability with other rat species extending to many environments, from grasslands to forests. It is also closely associated with humans, who provide easy access to food. It has become a major pest in most areas of its distribution.
A number of introduced species, some of which have become invasive species, have been added to New Zealand's native flora and fauna. Both deliberate and accidental introductions have been made from the time of the first human settlement, with several waves of Polynesian people at some time before the year 1300, followed by Europeans after 1769.
Rakino Island is one of the many islands in the Hauraki Gulf, an arm of the Pacific Ocean to the northeast of Auckland, New Zealand.
Donald Vincent Merton was a New Zealand conservationist best known for saving the black robin from extinction. He also discovered the lek breeding system of the kākāpō.
The ecological restoration of islands, or island restoration, is the application of the principles of ecological restoration to islands and island groups. Islands, due to their isolation, are home to many of the world's endemic species, as well as important breeding grounds for seabirds and some marine mammals. Their ecosystems are also very vulnerable to human disturbance and particularly to introduced species, due to their small size. Island groups, such as New Zealand and Hawaii, have undergone substantial extinctions and losses of habitat. Since the 1950s several organisations and government agencies around the world have worked to restore islands to their original states; New Zealand has used them to hold natural populations of species that would otherwise be unable to survive in the wild. The principal components of island restoration are the removal of introduced species and the reintroduction of native species.
Sir Paul Terence Callaghan was a New Zealand physicist who, as the founding director of the MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology at Victoria University of Wellington, held the position of Alan MacDiarmid Professor of Physical Sciences and was President of the International Society of Magnetic Resonance.
Whangara is a small community in the northeast of New Zealand's North Island, located between Gisborne and Tolaga Bay, five kilometres southwest of Gable End Foreland and two kilometres east of State Highway 35.
Nancy Brunning was a New Zealand actress, director, and writer who won awards in film and television and made a major contribution to the growth of Māori in the arts. She won the best actress award at the New Zealand Film Awards for her lead role in the film What Becomes of the Broken Hearted? (1999). In 2000, she won the Best Actress in Drama award at the New Zealand Television Awards for her lead role in the television series Nga Tohu.
The Noises are a collection of islands lying northeast of Rakino Island in Auckland's Hauraki Gulf, off the coast of the North Island of New Zealand. The largest and most forested islands are Ōtata and Motuhoropapa; Orarapa and Maria/Ruapuke are also significant. After a rat eradication campaign in the 1960s, Maria was the first New Zealand island to become predator-free. The lack of invasive predators, intact native forest, and large numbers of breeding seabirds give the Noises significant conservation value. There has however been a marked decline in marine biodiversity surrounding the islands from over-fishing.
Breaksea Island is a rugged 1.6 km2 (1 sq mi) island in the southwest of New Zealand, and is part of Fiordland National Park. Its highest point is 350 m (1,148 ft) asl and it lies about 2 km (1.2 mi) from the mainland in the entrance to Te Puaitaha / Breaksea Sound, north of the much larger Resolution Island. It is covered in temperate rainforest and was the site of one of the first successful campaigns to eradicate rats from a sizeable island.
Corinne Hannah Watts is a New Zealand entomologist and ecologist. Specimens collected by Watts are held at Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa.
Libby Liggins is an evolutionary ecologist and a Senior Lecturer in the School of Natural and Computational Science at Massey University, Auckland, New Zealand, as well as a research associate at Auckland Museum. Her research uses genetic and genomic data to explore the biogeography, population ecology, and biodiversity of marine organisms.
The 2004 Queen's Birthday Honours in New Zealand, celebrating the official birthday of Queen Elizabeth II, were appointments made by the Queen in her right as Queen of New Zealand, on the advice of the New Zealand government, to various orders and honours to reward and highlight good works by New Zealanders. They were announced on 7 June 2004.
Rachel M. Fewster is a British and New Zealand environmental statistician and statistical ecologist known for her work on wildlife population size, population genetics, and Benford's law, and for the development of the CatchIT citizen science project for monitoring invasive species. She is a professor of statistics in New Zealand at the University of Auckland.
Jessie Jacobsen is a senior lecturer in biological sciences at the University of Auckland. In 2007 she won MacDiarmid Young Scientist of the Year. Her research field is neurogenetics.
