We need to stand together and fight back against the conservation changes announced this week. 🌳💪
The Conservation Amendment Bill is against New Zealander’s love for nature. It threatens to break the role of government as stewards of public conservation land.
It prioritises development over protection of our shared public conservation lands and waters.
Once public land is gone, it’s gone for future generations of New Zealanders.
This Bill could allow some of our most loved places, like Cathedral Cove, West Coast rivers, and Dunedin's Tunnel Beach, to be opened up for economic development.
Instead of protecting these incredible landscapes and the native creatures that live there, the changes open them up to mining, agribusiness, large scale tourism projects, water storage, or energy developments.
The Government could even sell habitats that are home to native species that are at risk and in decline. For example, mohua, kororā blue penguins, and yellow crowned kākāriki.
These are our mountains, forests, rivers, beaches, and islands. They belong to all of us.
Updating our conservation system shouldn’t mean throwing open the door to selling, or forever changing, our wild places.
New Zealanders expect a system that protects nature, keeps public access, and has strong, independent oversight. Especially for the 4,000 native species that are threatened or at risk.
Together we can speak up and spread the word.
We expect laws and leaders to protect wildlife and our wild places. We need to let our MPs know in no uncertain terms that this Bill needs to be thrown out - we want our conservation land protected.
📸: Sean McGrath.
Time is running out for a holiday challenge like no other!
We’ve teamed up with Inspired Adventures to offer a hike and bike challenge.
You’ll explore Fiordland for four days: including sections of the Milford, Routeburn and Kepler tracks. You'll even get a cruise on Piopiotahi Milford Sound!
Registration costs just $1 until the end of May. Secure your spot now 👟 Link in comments
Let's protect conservation land.
Your favourite mountain, beach, or river depends on strong conservation law to be protected. Many of our treasured wild places are only thriving because of strong legal protections that conservationists have fought for decades to secure.
We are hosting a webinar at 7pm on Tuesday, 26 May on alarming conservation changes and to support urgent action for nature. 🌳🪶
The Government has just announced radical changes to conservation law that will fundamentally change conservation in Aotearoa New Zealand.
Public conservation land will be able to be developed and disposed of instead of protected. The scale of what is being proposed is massive – with some of our most iconic and treasured conservation land at risk.
Let’s stand up and say enough is enough – we need to act to protect our wild places.
Register for the webinar at the link in our bio 🔗
Tuesday 26 May, 7pm
📸: Neil Silverwood
Aotearoa New Zealand has a chance to choose a future that protects nature 🌳🪶
The Climate Change Commission's new National Climate Change Risk Assessment shows climate change is hitting Aotearoa harder, faster, and in more places. Floods, storms, and droughts driven by burning fossil fuels and livestock emitting methane are intensifying and compounding.
It describes a warming world acting like a pressure cooker on our native species: worsening freshwater quality, eroding dunes, and putting forests at risk.
But there is a better way, if politicians choose to take bold, urgent, and achievable action. Restored wetlands shelter native species and protect homes downstream from floodwater. Rooftop solar with batteries cuts climate-changing pollution while keeping the lights on through a power cut.
Working with nature, rather than against it, is a path forward that delivers wins for biodiversity, resilience, and affordability.
Everyone in Aotearoa benefits when we tackle climate change with nature – from the whio blue duck in our rivers to the families in Tairāwhiti recovering from natural disasters.
Every wetland restored to full health, solar panel added onto a marae, and hillside planted in native forest is another defence we can depend on in a warming world.
Read more in our press release at the link in our bio 🔗
📸: Scott Burnett
Otago farmer Sally Andrews always suspected critically endangered matuku-hūrepo Australasian bittern were living on her Māniatoto property. Then audio recorders confirmed it – revealing booming calls from male bitterns across the upper Taiari scroll plain.
There are thought to be fewer than 50 matuku-hūrepo in all of Otago.
The scroll plain is one of Aotearoa New Zealand's natural wonders – a vast serpentine wetland home to native lizards, fish found nowhere else on Earth, and a rich insect diversity. But decades of agricultural change, willow invasion, and pine spread had stripped native vegetation from the valley floor.
Since 2020, a freshwater conservation group called Tiaki Maniototo has been working with local farmers and others in the local community to turn that around. They've put in over 120,000 native plants, fenced land, and cleared invasive weeds. Now tūī and kererū are returning to areas where locals had barely seen them in living memory.
When a community shows its aroha through action, nature thrives alongside us.
📖 Full story in the autumn issue of Forest & Bird magazine – link in bio.
📸: Rob Suisted, Will Nelson, Bill Morris, Oscar Thomas
Our conservation lands are part of who we are as New Zealanders. It’s our forests, wetlands, rivers, mountains and coastlines that connect us to nature. 🌳⛰️
Conservation land is a koha to future generations. Not because of what we can take from it, but because of what we pass on, abundant, protected, and thriving.
The Government’s Conservation Act Land Management Bill, introduced to Parliament yesterday, is the most damaging step so far against Aotearoa New Zealand’s public conservation land.
These special places are protected because generations before us understood their value, and that consensus for conservation matters. Opening the door to land swaps and sell‑offs puts irreplaceable public land at risk, including habitats for taonga species like little blue penguins, kākā and mohua.
Once public conservation land is gone, it’s gone forever. Future generations can’t undo these decisions.
This isn’t about locking nature up. It’s about connecting and ensuring use never comes at the expense of the ecosystems we’re meant to safeguard. 🌿
Happy birthday to the legendary Sir David Attenborough who turns 100 today. Rā whānau ki a koe Sir David!
He's a giant in conservation who has spent his life capturing and sharing the incredible species and ecosystems across our planet, including species from Aotearoa New Zealand.
Sir David is a long admirer of New Zealand’s conservation efforts and has been a champion for our biodiversity. He’s even particularly fond of the kākāpō!
For those of you in Dunedin, @tuhuraotagomuseum is celebrating him with a family fun birthday party tomorrow. Take your whānau along, Tūhura Otago Museum 10am - 3pm.
Hopefully we’ll see some budding conservationists from @kiwiconservationclub coming along, too!!
📸: Chris Boland /
What a great day for learning about nature 💚🌳💡
It was fantastic to see such a full house for a public talk by our very own 'Living Lorax', Northland Conservation Manager Dean, sharing the hidden world inside our ancient forests.
Hollow rimu, pūriri and other old trees are the bat caves of Aotearoa. As they survive century by century, they become living towers – homes for native bats, cave wētā, geckoes and a whole hanging garden of plants in their canopies.
But these precious habitats are also under threat. Introduced predators like rats and possums also like these tuakana trees and prey on native wildlife, which is why the day also celebrated a brilliant win: local kids prizegiving for a rat trapping competition. 🙌🪴
Huge thanks to Te Hautū – the Kerikeri River Restoration Project for hosting, and to everyone who came along to learn, listen, take action and celebrate what makes our native forests so special.
⏰ Only two days left to submit on the Fisheries Amendment Bill.
Public pressure already forced the Government to drop one of the bill's worst provisions. We can finish the job – but only if you submit by 11.59pm, Wednesday 6 May.
This Bill would damage our oceans – weakening sustainability safeguards, slashing penalties for overfishing, and would make sharing fishing boat camera footage a criminal offence – with fines up to $50,000.
Use our submission guide to add your voice 👇 Link in our bio or screenshot the link in comments
Want to raise money for nature on your holiday?
In November, Forest & Bird and @inspiredadventures are taking a small group through Fiordland for four days. In November 2026, you’ll hike and bike through Fiordland National Park and experience sections of the Milford, Routeburn, and Kepler tracks – following alpine ridgelines, ancient beech forest, and glacial valleys.
On the trip, you'll be fundraising for Forest & Bird’s conservation work that helps protect precious places like these. Inspired Adventures will support you to get ready, fundraise, and sort everything to do with the trip itself. No previous trekking experience required – you just need to be reasonably active and keen, and enjoy the outdoors.
Right now, we’re having a flash sale on this awesome experience. It's just $1 to register for a holiday like no other – that's $389 off! If you're curious, reach out to learn more... but get in quick. The sale only runs until the end of May.
Link in bio and in comments to screenshot ❤️
Our Waikato Regional Conservation Manager Elvisa van der Leden hiked Te Tarapeke (The Pinnacles) in the Coromandel Forest Park over the weekend. She stopped to think about all the native birds, insects, and critically endangered Archey’s Frogs. The ngahere forest holds a lot of life.
But when you work in conservation, you also notice how much of this land is approved for mineral exploration.
OceanaGold's underground mine at Wharekirauponga has already been approved under the Fast-track Approvals Act. And that's just one. It’s eye opening to see how many active mineral exploration permits sit in and around this forest park right now.
The forest feels big when you're walking through it. For the species that depend on it, it's all they've got. Mining infrastructure fragments habitat. It cuts off the corridors that species need to move, feed and reproduce.
Fortunately, there is hope – we want to congratulate Ours Not Mine on their recent win against Hauraki District Council who had allowed OceanaGold to use a public road as their own private property for 40 years. That means private fences and vents on public land, obstructing visitors to access public conservation land.
Conservation land exists to help species thrive. It’s not a mine in waiting. This election, make sure the people making these decisions know we want conservation land protected.
Conservation land can't vote – but you can 🗳️
Now is the time to be rapidly decarbonising our transport, agriculture, and industry.
Let’s call on our Government to also invest in nature-based solutions like wetland restoration that protect our communities and mitigate climate change.
The storms are getting stronger. And the Government's main tool for cutting emissions is at risk of collapse.
The Climate Change Commission has confirmed that the Emissions Trading Scheme could stop working within the next decade. That's thanks in large part to the Government's own climate backsliding.
Every politician should be moving to take urgent climate action, to protect our species and communities. Nature can't vote, but we can.
Our wildlife and our people deserve action.
👉 Read our release at link in bio
