Secondary school geography brings together t & amacr;ngata (people) and whenua (land), the central concepts of te ao M & amacr;ori (the M & amacr;ori world). Therefore, geography is ideally placed to respond to calls for m & amacr;tauranga M & amacr;ori (M & amacr;ori knowledge) to gain "equal status" with Western knowledge. This article reports how 47 teachers integrated M & amacr;ori concepts into secondary school geography. Data were collected using an online questionnaire and analysed through content analysis and reflexive thematic analysis. The research identified a range of geography-related M & amacr;ori concepts. The findings suggest that including more conceptual m & amacr;tauranga M & amacr;ori, especially in physical geography, would help achieve "equal status for m & amacr;tauranga M & amacr;ori".
'Containing' companion cats within property boundaries is a possible method to protect native species and promote cat welfare. We explore the more-than-human relations associated with cat containment in the area surrounding the Zealandia ecosanctuary. Even when owners are concerned about wildlife and want to restrict their cats' mobilities, they struggle to keep cats within property boundaries. Cats actively resist containment, and this is sometimes facilitated by the material and spatial features of homes and gardens. Understanding these interactions and taking more-than-human agency seriously could support multispecies flourishing in the borderlands of Zealandia and inform current debates surrounding responsible cat ownership.
Though invasive, wild pigs (poaka) were fundamental to the survival of both M & amacr;ori and P & amacr;keh & amacr; during colonisation, and they remain an essential source of kai (sustenance) today. Utilising a Whanganui case study, 24 participants, semi-structured interviews, and thematic analysis guided by Kaupapa M & amacr;ori principles, describe hunters' interests in pig hunting. Hunting enhances wellbeing, providing food and economic security, fulfilling cultural aspirations, social, spiritual, environmental, and recreational experiences, and deepening connection to place. From a biosecurity perspective, hunters contribute to pest management when they hunt poaka. Conservation programmes that consider contributions from hunters maximise nature's benefits to people and vice versa.
Using the 2017 myrtle rust (Austropuccinia psidii) incursion into Aotearoa New Zealand as a case study, we analysed media articles to examine how roles and responsibilities of actors are framed in the biosecurity system. We reveal a multi-layered, evolving and uncertain biosecurity system. Ambiguity over leadership and responsibility in transitioning from 'containment' to 'learning to live with myrtle rust' created a vacuum which was filled by other biosecurity actors. Analysing media coverage of the incursion response highlighted the challenges associated with sharing responsibility for biosecurity and the need for more timely collaboration with and resourcing for non-government biosecurity actors.
In Aotearoa New Zealand, the Australian brushtail possum (Trichosurus vulpecula) is widely reviled as an icon of environmental destruction. This paper employs critical discourse analysis to examine how the possum is constructed as a pest within online media. Depicted as non-native, overconsuming, and proliferative, the possum emerges as a villain in antithesis to the natural world. This paper argues that such discourse reflects not only the possum's threat to biosecurity but also deeper tensions within capitalist and settler-colonial ways of relating to nature.
This paper examines the values held by experts involved in responding to myrtle rust, a major plant disease in Aotearoa New Zealand. Although values are central to biosecurity decision-making, they are often left implicit, risking weaker decisions and reduced engagement from participants. Drawing on interviews with key experts in government and research agencies, the paper reveals clear and varied value priorities, privileging cultural and environmental concerns. The findings highlight the need for values-focused deliberation within biosecurity planning. Purposeful and ongoing engagement and communication about the values underpinning decision-making can strengthen internal alignment among key actors and improve future biosecurity responses.
This article examines the Wellington k & amacr;k & amacr; as cultural beings engaged in dynamic relationships of becoming with their environment and other species. Through a practice of more-than-human storytelling that deliberately and politically decentres the human, we challenge the view that the 2002 k & amacr;k & amacr; translocation was a 'reintroduction' of an unchanged, ancient species. Instead, we argue, the k & amacr;k & amacr; worked in relation with modern conservation, biosecurity practices and urban entities to develop a new, distinctive cultural population. Intimately entangled with biosecurity practices, the k & amacr;k & amacr;'s successful establishment in Wellington demonstrates their capacity for adaptation and creative engagement with novel actors.
Given that views of nature are culturally determined, societies facing profound cultural change, for example, from immigration, need to consider the views of new societal members regarding conservation management. Drawing upon qualitative interviews, this research documents the views of 36 immigrant New Zealanders concerning invasive species management. Immigrants' views depart from the mainstream conservation narrative in terms of what they consider native/introduced; the level and type of harms associated with invasive species that they consider warranting intervention; and their rejection of the majority population ecological restoration narrative. The findings pose challenges for gaining support from this group for ongoing invasive species management.
This paper offers a description of the microbial world-making of scientific practices and technologies in manifesting the multiple ontologies of Mycoplasma bovis bacteria during the biosecurity response and eradication programme in Aotearoa New Zealand (Aotearoa). We consider that taking a material semiotic approach to exposing scientific world-making is useful because the way diseases are enacted or 'made real' influences the ways that disease impacts are understood. This knowledge in turn informs biosecurity decision-making. The paper contributes to local biosecurity scholarship by attending to the seemingly mundane practices of scientific actors who are involved with Aotearoa's biosecurity responses.
Planners are increasingly applying inclusive city concepts to help address economic polarisation and spatial segregation challenges within our cities. However, the concept of the inclusive city is stuck in cisnormative and heteronormative structures that produce inequalities for gender and sexual minorities. Drawing on walk-along interviews with participants in Wellington, we explored the experience of urban New Zealand spaces among people who identify as takat & amacr;pui and LGBTIQ+. Qualitative and quantitative data were analysed to highlight inclusive and/or exclusive spaces for takat & amacr;pui and LGBTIQ+ people. These experiences will help better inform planners when designing spaces to be more inclusive for all.
Birds, dust and smoke are all periodic windborne visitors to Aotearoa New Zealand. These visitors are, however, only the most visible tip of a churning atmosphere teeming with life. Drawing on work examining the assemblage of volumetric territoriality, this paper explores the framing of the atmosphere in biosecurity world-making. Biosecurity worlds in ANZ are largely territorialised in two dimensions, but biosecurity reduced to a plane struggles to grasp the swirling insecurities generated by aeolian processes and how atmospheric life might be rendered governable. The paper concludes by proposing ways of thinking about how volumetric biosecurity might be imagined and assembled.
A more circular economy is framed as a way to counter the current 'take-make-waste' linear economy and its associated adverse effects, including pollution, waste, over-consumption, biodiversity loss, and climate breakdown. Most circular economy literature focuses on technical transitions, material substitutions, and efficiencies. Consequently, there is less research on the significant social transitions needed and existing practices of circularity that communities already employ. We address this gap, using desk-based reviews to identify existing communities of circular practice in Aotearoa New Zealand. We use transitions literature relating to scale to analyse these existing practices and suggest how they can be better supported.
For 2 years, Israel has been committing what is widely recognised as a genocide of the Palestinian people. This is the most recent episode in Israel's suffocation of Palestinians and a hundred years of Palestinian resistance. In this commentary, I try to make sense of the silence and silencing on Palestine that has been evident in geographical institutions in Aotearoa New Zealand, despite an apparent growing commitment to decolonisation. Into this Palestine-shaped gap, I argue for decolonial solidarity that recognises Palestinian resistance and builds an expansive politics that draws Aotearoa and Palestine close.
This article draws on geographic and economic literature of small towns, and a case study of P & amacr;tea, to address the term 'left-behind' places. This article offers an overview of geographic literature on small towns in Aotearoa New Zealand, the concept of left-behind places, and diverse economies. I then apply this literature to a case study of P & amacr;tea, illustrating tensions between the term 'left-behind', the experiences of community leaders, and place-based community values. Finally, I suggest a geographic rethinking of places deemed 'left-behind', to recognise these nuances and diversities, offering the term 'left out' as an alternative.
This study explores how rural informal caregivers in Aotearoa New Zealand navigated caregiving during the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on rural challenges, habitus and resilience. Despite heightened care demands and reduced access to services, many participants-primarily older adults-demonstrated preparedness, adaptability, and social capital. We conceptualise this as 'rural habitus', shaped by ongoing experiences of structural disadvantages. Moving beyond idealised notions of self-sufficiency and rural resilience, we highlight how social marginalisation and structural constraints influenced rural caregiving experiences. These findings contribute to discussions on rural health disparities, caregiving under crisis, and the limits and possibilities of rural resilience amid social disruptions.
New Zealand has pioneered granting legal personhood to geographical entities, the most recent being Taranaki Mounga in 2025. I turn attention to the sea. M & amacr;ori have known this domain with personal intimacy (via naming of marine spaces, attributing them taniwha, clothing them in narrative) yet the dominant resource-centric view of oceans is tenacious. The industrial titans of fishing, drilling and mining dominate not just oceanic activity but also its imaginary. I draw on a range of personal experiences in watery places, as well as a range of writers, to explore the possibility of the ocean/moana being a candidate for personhood.
Fluidity is inherent to both the emergent field of geohumanities and the domain of creative arts. I explore the oceanic nature of the creativity at the heart of my practise as it is manifest as both a literal influence and a metaphorical reference point. In this essay, I reflect on how, as a painter and poet, streams of consciousness and the fluidity of collaborations can contribute to a more expansive and inclusive geography.
Photographer Tony Nyberg presents a series of images from a recent exhibition that resulted from a road trip throughout Aotearoa. During this journey, he sought to engage with the fluidity of landscape: its movement generated by both recent (land instability, flooding) and historic (land-use conversion from settler colonialism) processes. An undercurrent was our collective complicity in climate change. His images are complemented by excerpts from a commentary that Robin Kearns prepared as an accompaniment to the exhibition. We reflect on the process of collaboration between professional geographer and geographically inclined photographer in light of a broader quest to understand fluid geographies.
The phrase ‘fluid geographies’, chosen as the theme for the 2024 New Zealand Geographical Society Conference, has both literal and metaphorical dimensions. It suggests flows, immersions and crosscurrents. These nuances of fluidity are at play in the work of three New Zealand ‘geographers‐at‐large’: writer Kennedy Warne, painter and poet Gregory O'Brien and photographer Tony Nyberg. This short introduction prefaces and contextualises their contributions that follow in this issue of the New Zealand Geographer.
