Nelson Lakes

Declared in 1956, it protects two large lakes of glacial origin, Rotoiti and Rotoroa, cut by the advance and later retreat of glaciers during the last ice age and ringed by extensive, practically untouched forests of southern beech (Nothofagus). The park hosts one of the most intensive introduced-predator control programmes in New Zealand, centred on protecting native bird species such as the mohua, whose populations collapsed after Europeans introduced stoats, rats and possums, all of them nest predators against which New Zealand birds — evolved over millions of years without predatory land mammals — have no natural defences.