Coasting: The Sea Lion and the Lark Neville Peat Longacre Press, $29.95, ISBN 1877135577 Two centuries ago, sealers and whalers came to New Zealand to hunt marine mammals for their oil and skins. Millions were slaughtered, most of them on…
Maori Bird Lore Murdoch Riley Viking Sevenseas NZ Ltd, $89.95, ISBN 0854671005 The reissue of Elsdon Best’s Forest Lore of the Maori in 1977 coincided with my own first attempts at writing about the value of wilderness and the urgent…
Kapiti Chris Maclean Whitcombe Press, $49.95, ISBN 0 473 06166 X A hilly chip off the old block, Kapiti Island lies alluringly close to the mainland – a Kapiti Coast landmark with a reputation considerably out of proportion to its…
Lake, mountain, tree: an anthology of writing on New Zealand nature and landscape Philip Temple (ed) Godwit $34.95 ISBN 1 86962022 4 Landscape writing – like landscape painting – is as familiar as it is inoffensive. It’s Wordsworth’s Lake District,…
Pick of the Bunch: New Zealand Wildflowers Peter Johnson Longacre Press, $49.95, ISBN 1 877135 06 2 As the title suggests, Peter Johnson’s is an idiosyncratic choice of New Zealand’s wildflowers, which include approximately 2100 native flowering plants and 1800…
Burning Issues: The Failure of the New Zealand Response to Climatic Change Alexander Gillespie Dunmore Press $24.95 ISBN 0 86469 298 6 Guardians for the Environment Gary Hawke (ed) Institute of Policy Studies $30.00 ISBN 0 908935 06 4 Burning…
The Essential Old Rose: Growing and Using Old Roses in New Zealand Trevor Griffiths Viking, $34.95, ISBN 0 670 87187 7 The New Zealand Book of Roses: The best 150 Varieties, 2ed John Martin and Colin Hutchinson Viking, $34.95, ISBN…