The New Zealand Government has a vision of becoming predator-free by 2050. The Department of Conservation (DOC) and other organisations are working together to realise this vision for New ...
In this recorded professional learning session, Lyn Rogers and Andrea Soanes explore resources and ideas to support your students in taking action for conservation. They model a process of ...
Ranking species according to their risk of extinction is an important tool in conservation management. The Department of Conservation (DOC) spends almost 15% of its total budget on species ...
Throughout human existence we have relied on the oceans – for food, as a waste dump, for recreation, for economic opportunities and so on. However, it’s not only our activities in the marine ...
Human beings have an impact on river ecosystems. The relationship living organisms have with each other and with their environment is extremely complex. Impacts on a species or a non-living ...
An ecosystem consists of all of the organisms living within an area and the interactions between them and the physical environment. All ecosystems, whether they are marine, freshwater or located ...
This animated video shows the movement of the tectonic plates that make up the Earth’s crust. Starting 600 million years ago, watch continents form and break apart as the plates move. Pangaea the ...
People like to live near estuaries. In pre-European times, estuaries were favourite places for Māori to gather – particularly to harvest and enjoy kaimoana. Today, there are major settlements ...
Historical artefacts like moa bones can be dated using a technique that measures the activity of the radioisotope carbon-14 still present in the sample. By comparing this with a modern standard ...
New Zealand is home to a wide variety of water fowl. Water fowl is the common name for the Anatidae, the family of birds that includes ducks, geese and swans. Most of the Anatidae in New Zealand ...
Skinks and geckos are the only 2 native families of lizard found in New Zealand (note that tuatara are not lizards). They are vertebrates and belong to the class Reptilia. All our native skink ...
New Zealand’s endemic tuatara is a very unusual animal. They are the only living representative of a group of reptiles known as Rhynchocephalia (sometimes known in the past as Sphenodontia) that ...
Scientists generally agree that the amount of water on Earth is finite, and that the water cycle constantly recycles water through the Earth’s systems. But how long does this take? How long does ...
The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) ranks a species as extinct when there is no reasonable doubt that the last individual has died. This might sound like a simple ...
In this video, educator Angela Schipper demonstrates how to build a model of an aquifer – a layer of rock or other material that carries water underground. This is an excellent activity that ...
A habitat is the area where an organism or group of organisms live and breed. One habitat will be distinct from another due to its particular environmental conditions. However, habitats are not ...
The New Zealand longfin eel (Anguilla dieffenbachii) is New Zealand’s only endemic freshwater eel. Our shortfin eel (Anguilla australis) is also found in Australia and some Pacific Islands. We ...
As New Zealanders looking to the future, we are faced with many opportunities – and challenges. These include improving the health of all our people, advancing our economic growth, protecting our ...
Mussels are bivalve molluscs. New Zealand has 22 species of mussel including the blue mussel (kuku), little black mussel (hauea) and the ribbed mussel (pukanikani). Depending on the species ...
Professor Stephen Wing, from the University of Otago, is a marine ecologist. In this video, he talks about the role of an ecologist and the types of research questions ecologists try to answer. ...
The Science Learning Hub has a selection of resources that have been translated into te reo Māori and a number of resources that feature both te reo Māori and English. Our webinar Opportunities ...
New Zealand native birds have been greatly affected by predation. For millions of years, they lived in an environment without natural predators. Many species developed traits like flightlessness ...
In this activity, students build a food web that represents the New Zealand bush ecosystem. Students use images of organisms within the ecosystem to explore the relationships between them. By the ...
An inquiry approach is a method often used in science education. The question bank provides an initial list of questions about pollination and places where their answers can be found. The article ...
