It can be easy to stick to what you know, to keep to the well-walked and well-marked routes through ZEALANDIA. How often do you take the paths less travelled? 
There are many lesser-visited spots in the valley, particularly once you start exploring the tracks beyond the Upper Dam. However, you don’t always have to venture far to get off the beaten track. 

Work is picking up steam in ZEALANDIA’s Centre for People and Nature, with around 80 people  national and internal research projects and collaborations now underway. 

Launched last year, the Centre leads and facilitates research on how to enhance the role of nature in cities. Researchers across areas of health and wellbeing, the science of nature, and connecting people and nature, are drawing on the ZEALANDIA sanctuary, the green heart and living laboratory of Wellington. 

The moko kākariki (Wellington green geckos/barking geckos) are on the move!  

The geckos came to us originally as part of a 'breed for release programme', and have thrilled many visitors to ZEALANDIA, in their nursery enclosures on the Round Lawn.  

Wellington’s Kaiwharawhara Stream might be polluted now, but citizen scientists are helping restore it to health.  

In a recent survey of the stream’s estuary by Sustainable Coastlines, 2400 pieces of mostly plastic rubbish, were collected and analysed by volunteers. Coastal clean-ups, such as those coordinated by Sustainable Coastlines, have inspired the Kaiwharawhara Catchment Plastics Project, led by Dr Amanda Valois of NIWA. 

Celebrate Matariki at  Te Mārā a Tāne ZEALANDIA with family and friends, as we look upwards from our world of Papatūānuku, the earth mother, to explore the realm of Ranginui, the sky father.  
 
Go on a fun family Sanctuary Star Search, visit the Star Station and design a star to take home or leave on the Zealandia night sky mural. Share Matariki tales and waiata with storyteller Moira Wairama. Learn about the Maramataka (Māori Lunar Calendar) and Matariki with an astrophysicist, Dr Pauline Harris. View the night sky through the Wellington Astronomical Society’s telescopes and many more stellar events!  

Our native fish are among the hidden treasures of New Zealand’s animal life because they are seldom seen. Yet the Kaiwharawhara Stream catchment is known to have 13 species of fish out of the 21 in the Wellington Region. 

‘Sanctuary to Sea/Kia Mouriora te Kaiwharawhara’, a multi-stakeholder restoration project co-ordinated by ZEALANDIA staff, aims to improve fish habitats throughout this important catchment. Beginning within the ZEALANDIA sanctuary, the catchment is the largest in Wellington city, covering over 16 square kilometres.  

Through the ZEALANDIA youth ambassador programme, young people in Wellington were given the opportunity to contribute to conservation with support from the ecosanctuary. Elizabeth Werner is 18 years old and from Tawa. She is passionate about science communication and loves to creatively express the issues facing the environment through public speaking, art, and dance. 

It’s a beautiful calm summer evening. The last glow of the sunset is just fading from the sky and most of the daytime birds have fallen silent, although the kākā are still intermittently screeching in the tall pines at the top of the valley. I’m at the pylon, one of the highest points in the ZEALANDIA valley. I’m with another volunteer, and together we start unpacking torches, a clipboard and a compass, check the time, and settle ourselves down on a bench to wait.

ZEALANDIA’s upper dam is a peaceful spot with the tranquil waters of the upper lake on one side, and a view over the treetops and down the lower valley on the other. But things would have been very different back in 1907 when the dam was being constructed.

It’s autumn and fungi are appearing all over the ZEALANDIA valley. There are also fungi sprouting up in the ZEALANDIA stairwell - but in the form of Hayley May’s beautiful photographs. Her exhibition, ‘an enchantment of fungi’, is running until the end of June 2019. Hayley’s photographs were featured in this online photo essay a couple of years ago and she has continued to photograph fungi in the valley ever since.

Here are a few things that you may not know about fungi...