General facts 3 land and recources 4

Plant and Animal Life

Scientists believe that New Zealand was once part of a supercontinent known as Gondwanaland and that its flora and fauna evolved in isolation for more than 100 million years after this landmass broke apart. Some 84% of the country’s native plants are found nowhere else.

The pohutukawa has red flowers at Christmas time, and people call it ‘the Zealand Christmas tree’. But the greatest of the trees is the kauri. Kauris are tall, straight trees, and their wood is exellent for making boats and houses. Today you cannot cut down kauri trees, the few remaining are now protected by law. The tallest kauri in New Zealand is Tane Mahuta; it is fifty-two metres tall, and more than 1,200 years old.

The most famous New Zealand’s bird is kiwi. It has become the country’s symbol. It’s a small, tubby bird and, because it’s nocturnal, is not easy to observe. Despite the fact that nighttime is when they are most active, they are still fairy lazy, sleeping for up to 20 hours a day. The rest of the time they spend poking around for worms, which they sniff out, with the nostrils on the end of their bill. The kiwi’s wings have become very small, so it cannot fly any more. It cannot see very well either – but it can smell, and not many birds can do that. The female kiwi is larger than the male and much fiercer. She lays an egg weighing up to half a kilo, huge in relation to her size (about 20% of her body weight). Many people recognize this strange bird now, and New Zealanders are often called Kiwis.

New Zealand is also the home of the tuatara, one of the oldest types of animals in the world. They are about sixty centimeters long and have a third ‘eye’ on the top of their heads; tuataras sleep during the winter, and they use their third eye to walk themselves up in spring. It is a lizard-like reptile dating back to the age of the dinosaurs and perhaps before (260 million years?). active at night, it eats insects, small mammals and bird’s eggs. It may live over 100 years.

New Zealand has no snakes and only one spider that is dangerous to humans, the rare katipo, a close relative of the North American black widow and the Australian red-back.

New Zealand’s isolation has also had a profound impact on its animal life. Before the arrival of the Maoris, there were only birds, lizards, frogs, and two species of bats on the islands. The Maoris brought dogs and rats, and the Europeans brought deer, goats, rabbits, opossum (from Australia), and other small animals.