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...

A new sustainability partnership between ZEALANDIA eco-sanctuary and James Cook Hotel Grand Chancellor aims to strengthen environmental goals and enrich the visitor experience to Wellington.

The male five-month old takahē chick at ZEALANDIA, has been named. 

The chick has been given the name Te Āwhiorangi which means ‘the encircler of heaven’. It references a sacred pounamu adze (cutting tool) that is said to be used by the atua (god) Tāne to cut the sinews that bound Ranginui (the sky father) and Papatūānuku (the earth mother). 
 
The name has been agreed by ZEALANDIA, Taranaki Whānui te Upoko o te Ika and the Department of Conservation's Takahē Recovery Programme.

A team from Greater Wellington Regional Council (GWRC) came to ZEALANDIA on 2 April to set one of the regional State of the Environment (SoE) monitoring plots. GWRC Terrestrial Biodiversity SoE monitoring programme aims to monitor the state of biodiversity, pressure by weeds and animal pests and effectiveness of pest management. 

Student Volunteer Week, 1-7 April 2019, celebrates and recognises the contributions of young people taking their future into their own hands. 
 
The focus in 2019 is Kaitiakitanga, the guardianship of our environment. Student volunteers are instrumental to this guardianship and are at the forefront of advocating for environmental protection and carbon neutrality. 

Wikipedia is one of the most useful (and used) sites on the web.  What comes up first when you do a Google search? Yep – it’s usually a Wikipedia page.  More people use Wikipedia worldwide than any other reference resource on the web.

Unfortunately though, New Zealand’s wonderful native species are under-represented on Wikipedia. This means that many of our endangered species are not getting the attention they deserve.

Hihi were first introduced into Zealandia in 2005 with 60 birds translocated from Tiri Tiri Matangi Island. Since then they have bred successfully every year and this week the 1000th hihi hatched at Zealandia was issued with its unique combination of coloured leg bands.

Alison and Michael Hamilton were recipients of the 2018 Faye Schaef award for ZEALANDIA volunteers. This award was given in recognition of their work and dedication over the last decade, in which time they’ve done a range of volunteering activities from hihi feeding to mouse audits to being part of the transect team.

I met up with Alison and Michael recently to talk about why they volunteer as much as they do and what keeps them coming back.

We recently announced that our resident takahē, Nio and Orbell, have hatched a chick! 

ZEALANDIA's Lead Ranger Conservation, Ellen Irwin, has compiled some common Qs & As around how we're responding to this exciting arrival.