Celebrating a century of conservation

Since 1923 Forest & Bird has worked with supporters, members, communities and government to protect and restore Aotearoa New Zealand’s environment and native species. Funded solely by memberships, donations and bequests, the organisation is a singular voice for nature.

Accurately capturing the unique qualities and aesthetic charms of flora and fauna requires a marriage of art and science. Wellington-based artist Rachel Walker is a keen observer of New Zealand’s natural taonga (treasures). To honour Forest & Bird’s centenary, Rachel has created four beautiful artworks. Each watercolour collage features animals and plants from specific habitats in the North and South Islands.

Kāpiti Island, Greater Wellington

This artwork was completed by Rachel for the 26 Habitats NZ writers’ project. It represents the Kāpiti Island nature reserve with native forest birds kōkako, tīeke, kākāriki and tūī. This stamp reflects Forest & Bird’s origins, island bird sanctuaries, restoration, conservation volunteers and legacy.

In the 1920s, disappearing birdlife on Kāpiti Island inspired Captain Ernest Valentine Sanderson to campaign vigorously for the government to remove the pests and replant the native forest. After the government reluctantly agreed, Sanderson was encouraged by other conservationists, including former Prime Minister Sir Thomas Mackenzie, to establish a national nature protection society in 1923. Its aim was to protect New Zealand’s birds and bush, which were rapidly disappearing at the time.

Today, predator-free Kāpiti Island is thriving and home to many native birds, including kōkako, tīeke, kākāriki and tūī. Sanderson was a founding father of modern-day conservation in Aotearoa and his enduring legacy is Forest & Bird. This stamp also pays tribute to the ‘mum and dad’ armies of conservation volunteers who pioneered island restoration from the 1960s, and continue to provide vital refuges for many critically endangered species today.

The Catlins, Otago

Heroing the forest-inhabiting tautuku gecko, this stamp also features the Gollum galaxias fish, giant southern rātā flowers, pekapeka long-tailed bat and endemic creeping foxglove. The artwork aims to capture a sense of discovery and hope through New Zealand’s unique biodiversity and fresh water.

The Tautuku ecological sanctuary is a landscape-scale restoration project in the Catlins led by volunteers from three Forest & Bird branches: Dunedin, South Otago, and Southland. From hilltops to sea, the sanctuary is home to many interconnected habitats, including virgin and regenerating forests, two pristine rivers, the last river catchment on the South Island's east coast, native vegetation from headwaters to the sea, and a mosaic of wetlands, estuaries, pingao sand dunes, oioi rushlands, frost flats and mānuka shrublands.

Since the project started five years ago, Forest & Bird staff and volunteers have discovered tautuku gecko living deep in the forest, a nationally significant ancient population of Gollum galaxias trapped between two natural stone ‘dams’ in the Tautuku River, pekapeka long-tailed bats (one of the only two endemic mammals of Aotearoa, the other being the short-tailed bat), mātātā fernbirds, matuku hūrepo Australasian bitterns, red-crowned kākāriki (the Catlins forests are the only mainland site for wild populations), a giant southern rātā (possibly the largest in the South Island/world) and numerous rare plants, including the

Nationally Critical Ourisia modesta (an endemic New Zealand creeping foxglove). At the heart of the sanctuary is Forest & Bird’s Lenz Reserve, which was purchased with funds bequested by Iris Lenz in 1964 and features regenerating and old-growth kāmahi, rimu and rātā forest.

Today, Forest & Bird staff, contractors and volunteers, boosted by funds from the Department of Conservation's Maho mō te Taiao Jobs for Nature programme, are removing predators and pests from a 600ha area. This includes more than 60km of trap lines for mustelid control, possum and feral cat control, and the culling of pigs and red deer that were having a devastating impacts on the habitat. The team also monitors nests of at-risk native birds to help identify the threats they face and inform predator-control efforts. New botanical and insect discoveries are still being made deep in the forest.

Waitākere Ranges, Auckland

Featuring the tāiko black petrel, kauri, tohorā southern right whale, werewere kōkako blue mushrooms, neinei (spider wood) and Cook’s petrels flying off the coast, this stamp represents the seabirds of Aotearoa, marine protection and the vital connection between the land and the ocean.

Ark in the Park is an unfenced nature sanctuary in the Waitākere Ranges Regional Park and contains important stands of kauri forests. The landscape is being restored for future generations in a conservation partnership between Forest & Bird and Auckland Council, supported by mana whenua Te Kawerau ā Maki, who have historical and territorial rights over the land. A group of 300 volunteers carries out weekly predator control checks and looks after local wildlife, including reintroduced kōkako. Forest & Bird has also spent many decades advocating for seabirds, marine mammals and ocean protection.

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Above: 1 $1.70 Kāpiti Island, Greater Wellington stamp. 2 $3.00 The Catlins, Otago stamp.

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Before the arrival of humans, Aotearoa was a land of birds, including tens of millions of seabirds that nested on clifftops and in the forest. Then people arrived and set about destroying the forest and releasing a hoard of introduced mammalian predators that decimated the forest floor, including the nesting grounds of burrowing seabirds such as prions, shearwaters, and petrels. Black petrels once bred on the mainland, including in the kauri forests of Ark in the Park and the Waitākere Ranges, but they became locally extinct - their nests are particularly vulnerable to feral cats, feral pigs, mustelids and rats. They are also a species at high risk from fisheries bycatch.

Today, tāiko black petrels nest in kauri forest on Great Barrier Island, where they are safe from predators. After their chicks have fledged, tāiko fly all the way to South America, staying in eastern tropical Pacific waters from July to October then returning to breed in Aotearoa. Cook’s petrels are also found in kauri habitat on Little Barrier Island and regularly fly over the Waitākere Ranges at night as they cross the Tasman Sea back to Little Barrier. Seabirds will return to abandoned breeding colonies on the mainland if humans can remove introduced predators, and it’s hoped tāiko will one day return to Ark in the Park.

Buller Plateau, West Coast

A forest ringlet butterfly is pictured with an Avatar moth, a giant land snail

(Powelliphanta patrickensis), pygmy pine, windswept mānuka and eyebright flowers. The artwork reflects on the changing climate, nature’s fragility, conservation activism and the future.

This stamp depicts the extraordinary flora, fauna and natural beauty of the Denniston and Stockton Plateaus, collectively known as the Buller Plateau, which sits 600m above the coastal plains east of Westport, at the top of the South Island. This nationally outstanding landscape with its dramatic combination of coal-bearing rock, wetland, sub-alpine forest and tussock was at the centre of huge conservation battles during the 2000s as environmentalists tried to stop coal mining from destroying the area’s unusual geological formations and the specially adapted plants that live in this windswept, challenging place. There are no awe-inspiring forest giants here, no great kauri striving to reach the light. Instead the environment encourages plants to do the opposite, to hunker down and hug the ground out of the wind and elements. One of these plants is represented on this stamp - the pygmy pine, New Zealand’s smallest conifer, which only grows to 30cm. The plateau is also home to giant carnivorous land snails, including Powelliphanta patrickensis, which is endemic to Denniston.

Forest & Bird has campaigned for decades to protect New Zealand’s unique landscapes, including conservation land, from being destroyed by mining for coal, gold, and other precious minerals. This is a fight the society has taken all the way to the Supreme Court and that continues today at nearby Te Kuha. In 2012 Forest & Bird organised a bioblitz (an intense period of biological surveying) on the Denniston Plateau to document its unique flora and fauna as part of a campaign to try to have the land legally protected as a nature reserve. During the bioblitz, scientists supported by Forest & Bird staff and volunteers discovered a nationally important population of forest ringlet butterflies and a new species of moth, later named Avatar by the New Zealand public.

Forest & Bird started raising awareness of climate change in the early 1990s and today climate advocacy is at the heart of all its campaigns. During its 100th year, Forest & Bird will be championing nature-based solutions, such as controlling browsing mammals and making room for rivers, to help our world adapt to climate change while boosting biodiversity and ensuring a resilient future for all living creatures on Earth.

The stamp issue includes a first day cover, miniature sheet, miniature sheet first day cover, greeting card set, maximum card set, tea towels, art prints, and individual stamps ranging in price from $1.70 to $4.30.