Contents

COVER PHOTO HEADLINE : OUR HYBRID FUTURE Exotic species are breeding with natives. For decades we've been culling their offspring. Is it time to stop?
CONTENTS : Departments : UP FRONT EDITORIAL -- IN THE FIELD -- VIEWFINDER Te Rawhitiroa Rosch documents the traditional harvest of a sperm whale stranded in the Coromandel -- GeoNEWS Storm birds, understanding supplejack, kakapo conservation, teaching drones bird tricks and news for crayfish - good and bad -- PROFILE How a diagnosis made life better for cybersecurity engineer Denise Carter-Bennett -- JUST SO Why are some creatures here for a good time, and others for a long time?
REFLECTION CULTURE The uphill battlefaced by wartime plastic surgeon Sir Harold Gillies, and a big, beautiful book about artist Robin White -- HISTORY Soviet Russia aimed a satellite at Venus. It hit Ashburton.
CONTENTS : Features :
THE SCHOOL AWAY FROM SCHOOL Te Aho o Te Kura Pounamu / the Correspondence School has become a place for kids who are bullied, anxious, or profoundly out of step with the mainstream system.
LIFE WILL FIND A WAY We cull hybrids. We steal their eggs, and break up inter-species breeding pairs, all in the name of genetic integrity. Protecting the mauri. We created this tangle by bringing in exotic species. Can we ever undo it?
And should we even try?
A CLEAN SWEEP? Every year, New Zealand vessels drag trawl gear across nearly 100,000 square kilometres of our seafloor. Can we4 make bottom trawling better? Or should we ban it altogether?
UNDER THE MOUNTAIN New Zealand's most valuable work of art lay waiting in a Taranaki swamp for 150 years, then was smuggled across the world, and became entangled in the ransom of a millionaire's kidnapped daughter.
THE GREAT BIRD NERDS Around the country, keen birders are ticking off grid squares, aiming for high scores on the Bird Atlas, the biggest-ever citizen-science project on our shores.