Campaigns

Our conservation land is often the last refuge for many native species that are in serious trouble.

Sea lions once lived around the entire coastline of New Zealand, but hunting nearly killed them all. Now, they mostly breed on the remote Subantarctic Auckland Islands.

Our countryside has been transformed in the last few decades, as colourful and diverse drylands turn into the monotonous green pastures.

This transformation has only been made possible by irrigation.

New Zealanders love nature and want to protect it. It is part of our identity, the foundation of our economy, and what makes this country special. In fact, nature is at the heart of everything we do.

But it has also reached breaking point.

In New Zealand, it’s illegal to kill protected animals - unless you’re a commercial fisher.

Due to its long geological isolation since breaking away from the supercontinent Gondwana about 80 million years ago, New Zealand’s plants and animals have developed down a unique evolutionary path.

For too long, nature has been treated as a raw input for economic growth, or a dumping ground for waste. As a result, nature has reached breaking point.

The Hauraki Gulf is an incredible place, globally recognised for the diversity of its wildlife, including whales, dolphins, and seabirds.

In Northland, many great native forests and their wildlife are collapsing.

Penguins are incredible birds, and New Zealand is home to one-third of the world’s penguin species.

Forest & Bird is proud to publish the Best Fish Guide, New Zealand’s only independent consumer guide to ecologically sustainably caught seafood.

Marine reserves are the ocean equivalent of national parks and mean marine life can breed and regenerate with less disruption from humans.

An open-cast mine on Te Kuha would destroy a unique ecosystem that is home to a range of threatened species. 

Seabed mining off the coast of Taranaki could destroy an area roughly three times the size of Rangitoto Island and threaten a unique ocean environment. 

Over hundreds of millions of years, decayed plants and animals have been transformed into deposits of oil, coal, and natural gas lying under New Zealand’s land and sea, locking away huge amounts of carbon.

The Mackenzie Basin and its natural tussock drylands and the biodiversity it supports are under threat.

In forgotten corners of New Zealand, nature is disappearing. Government agencies are failing to protect nature on public land.

Imagine an Aotearoa free of introduced predators, where urban areas are filled with native birds, lizards, insects, and plants. 

New research shows plastic makes up 78 percent of waste on New Zealand beaches.

Our seabirds are particularly vulnerable to plastic pollution: global research has found rubbish is being fed to chicks by their parents and it is killing them.

Kauri dieback disease is caused by a microscopic spore that attacks the roots and trunk of kauri trees, damaging the tissue that carries nutrients, and causing them to starve.

Native fish are now absent from many of the streams where they were once found. 74 percent of our freshwater fish species are in danger of extinction.

New Zealand has a long history of keeping our most spectacular landscapes open for all to enjoy – right from the creation of Tongariro National Park, the first national park in the world gifted by indigenous people. 

Ninety percent of New Zealand’s original wetlands have been destroyed by agricultural and urban development – and are still disappearing.