New Zealand

Oceanía

Capital: WellingtonDecember to February

148

Documented species

Parks and reserves

Dive sites

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New Zealand broke away from Gondwana some eighty million years ago and was left without land mammals apart from a couple of bat species, so it was the birds that took on every ecological role: there were herbivorous birds the size of a horse, predatory birds at the top of the chain and many that lost the power of flight because nothing hunted them. The arrival of humans and of the rats, stoats and possums they brought with them triggered one of the most severe island extinctions on the planet. The country keeps glaciers, fjords, active volcanoes, podocarp and southern beech forests, and has turned its predator-free islands into arks in which to rebuild its original ecosystems.

The nature of New Zealand

National animal: The kiwi, the national bird and the informal name New Zealanders give themselves

Did you know?

The kākāpō is the only flightless parrot in the world and also the heaviest: it can top three kilos, is nocturnal, smells of flowers and breeds only in years when the rimu fruits, which can mean waits of two to four years. Little more than two hundred are left, every one with its own name, health record, radio tracking and a level of individual monitoring probably given to no other wild animal on the planet.

Biodiversity profile

Australasia (Polinesia geologica)Aprox. 32-33% del territorio bajo el dominio de conservacion (Conservation Estate); solo 0,4% del area marina en reservas de no-extraccion

Climate

•Oceanico templado (Cfb) en la mayor parte del pais
•Subtropical humedo en extremo norte
•Alpino en zonas montañosas de Isla Sur

Main biomes

•Bosque templado lluvioso (podocarpaceas y hayas del sur)
•Praderas alpinas y subalpinas
•Humedales y turberas
•Matorral costero
•Bosque templado de podocarpos
•Fiordo
•Glaciar y alta montaña
•Isla libre de depredadores
•Pradera de tussock
•Volcán activo
•Litoral de aguas frías

Marine and coastal ecosystems

•Zona marina 15 veces mayor que el territorio terrestre
•Fiordos (Fiordland)
•Praderas de algas kelp

Flagship wildlife

•Kiwi
•Kakapo
•Tuatara
•Kea
•Delfin de Maui
•Leon marino de Nueva Zelanda
•Weta gigante
•Takahe
•Pingüino de ojo amarillo
•Delfín de Héctor
•Albatros real
•Foca de Nueva Zelanda

Notable endemic species

•Alto nivel de endemismo: ~80% de plantas vasculares, 86% de moluscos, 81% de artropodos y 60% de vertebrados son nativos exclusivos del pais
•Kakapo
•Tuátara
•Takahe
•Kea
•Delfín de Héctor

Notable threatened species

•Kakapo (En Peligro Critico)
•Delfin de Maui (En Peligro Critico, uno de los cetaceos mas amenazados del mundo)
•Kiwi (varias especies Vulnerables/En Peligro)
•94% de reptiles y 82% de aves nativas amenazadas o en riesgo

Notable protected areas

•Parque Nacional Fiordland
•Parque Nacional Tongariro (doble Patrimonio Mundial)
•Parque Nacional Abel Tasman
•Parque Nacional de Fiordland
•Isla de Kapiti
•Parque Nacional de Tongariro
•Isla de Tiritiri Matangi
•Parque Nacional del Monte Cook
•Isla Codfish

Main conservation threats

•Especies invasoras (mustelidos, ratas, zarigüeyas) causa principal de declive de aves nativas
•Perdida de humedales (mas del 90% del original destruido)
•Cambio climatico (aumento de olas de calor, incendios)
•Nueva Zelanda tiene la mayor proporcion mundial de especies en riesgo

Notable natural phenomena

•Migraciones estacionales de aves marinas
•Actividad geotermica en Isla Norte (relacionada con biodiversidad de habitats unicos)

Conservation

The country has taken on the goal of eradicating rats, stoats and possums from its entire territory by 2050, a project on a scale never attempted anywhere. The tuatara, sole survivor of an order of reptiles that split from the rest more than two hundred million years ago, survives thanks to rodent-free islands.

Where and when to watch wildlife

Fiordland in the austral summer for kea and mountain birds. The Otago peninsula year-round for albatrosses and yellow-eyed penguins. Kaikōura for sperm whales and Hector's dolphins.

Cifras de endemismo y amenaza varian segun grupo taxonomico y fuente (DOC, Stats NZ, WWF); se han usado los rangos mas citados.

Sources: Stats NZ - Biodiversity | WWF New Zealand - Endangered Species Aotearoa | The Conversation (Victoria University Wellington) | BioDB.com

Temperate forest Grassland Freshwater

Parks and reserves

National Park

Aoraki/Mount Cook

It protects Aoraki, New Zealand's highest peak and the cradle of New Zealand mountaineering, Edmund Hillary included

View park National Park

Fiordland

New Zealand's largest national park; it takes in Milford Sound, which Rudyard Kipling called the eighth wonder of the world

View park World Heritage Site (Natural)

Islas Subantárticas de Nueva Zelanda

Five Southern Ocean archipelagos with the greatest seabird diversity on the planet.

View park National Park

Mount Aspiring

Nicknamed the Matterhorn of New Zealand for its near-perfect pyramid, visible from a great distance

View park World Heritage Site (Natural)

Te Wahipounamu

The "place of greenstone": fjords, glaciers and relict Gondwanan forests in the south-west of the South Island.

View park National Park

Tongariro

New Zealand's first national park and the fourth in the world; the only one voluntarily gifted by the indigenous people who owned it

View park National Park

Westland Tai Poutini

The Franz Josef and Fox glaciers descending almost into temperate rainforest, a few kilometres from the sea.

View park National Park

Abel Tasman

New Zealand's smallest national park but one of the most visited, with golden beaches reachable only on foot or by kayak

View park National Park

Arthur's Pass

The South Island's first national park, on the alpine pass that separates two radically different climates.

View park National Park

Egmont/Taranaki

Mount Taranaki is an almost perfectly conical volcano, so symmetrical that it often doubles for Mount Fuji in films

View park

Diving and snorkelling

Wreck/Temperate reef

Bay of Islands

It holds the remains of Greenpeace's Rainbow Warrior, sunk in 1985; temperate water rich in biodiversity.

View dive site Alpine freshwater lake

Blue Lake (Nelson Lakes)

Certified by New Zealand scientists as the clearest natural water ever measured, with visibility comparable to air.

View dive site Cave/Rocky reef

Cathedral Cove

A limestone arch formation famous from film appearances, with temperate rocky reefs around it.

View dive site Cold-water fjord

Fiordland (Milford Sound)

A unique phenomenon: a dark freshwater layer lets black coral grow at barely 10 m.

View dive site Temperate rocky reef

Goat Island Marine Reserve

New Zealand's first marine reserve (1975), with a notable recovery of fish after decades of complete protection.

View dive site Cold-water wreck

Pecio Mikhail Lermontov

A Soviet liner of 175.8 m and some 20,000 tonnes, built at Wismar in 1972. On 16 February 1986 she struck the rocks off Cape Jackson, in the Marlborough Sounds, with her hull opened in three places; she limped as far as Port Gore and sank that same night. Of the 738 people aboard only one died, the refrigeration engineer Pavel Zaglyadimov. She lies whole on her starboard side, with the port bow at 12-14 m and the seabed at 36-38, which makes her the largest diveable wreck in Australasia.

View dive site Wreck / Artificial reef

Pecio Rainbow Warrior

The Greenpeace flagship, originally the British trawler Sir William Hardy (1955), some 40 m long. On the night of 10 July 1985 French secret service agents placed two bombs on her hull in Auckland harbour, as she was preparing to protest against French nuclear testing at Mururoa. The damage made repair impossible and in 1987 she was deliberately sunk off the Cavalli Islands as an artificial reef. She rests on sand at 26 m, with the shallowest part at around 14.

View dive site Sea cave (the largest in the world)