Nature / Sustainable Tourism

Spring is in the air and New Zealand underwater tourist attraction Kelly Tarlton’s has made a news splash with a baby boom that’s keeping marine midwives swum off their feet.

A New Zealand wildlife experience offering a close encounter with marine mammals in their natural environment has won a prestigious international award for responsible tourism.

Scientists say they have discovered 70 million-year-old dinosaur footprints in the South Island region of Nelson – the first evidence of the pre-historic monsters’ existence in New Zealand.

Two top New Zealand tourism businesses have been short-listed for international responsible tourism awards.

Some call it the “flightless national bore” and others a “biological oddity” but New Zealand’s iconic bird, the kiwi, has topped polls to become NZ Bird of the Year

A new four-day walking track through the Waitakere Ranges west of Auckland has been named after one of New Zealand’s greatest adventurers, Sir Edmund Hillary.

A British zoologist who had an encounter of the mating kind with an endangered kakapo during filming for the BBC in New Zealand, has had the honour of naming one of the rare parrots.

New Zealand has a new international celebrity – parrot pin up boy Sirocco the kakapo has shot to stardom after his unusual mating attempt with a zoologist aired on BBC television.

New Zealand is turning the concept of a wildlife ‘Big Five’ upside down by developing its own ‘Small Five’ list aimed at encouraging travellers to come and see some of the world’s rarest creatures for themselves.

Kiwis are reputed to be great global travellers but the discovery of New Zealand’s national icon in the centre of the Milky Way Galaxy in outer space has to be off the planet in anyone’s book.