Capable of diving more than two kilometres beneath the surface, the sperm whale (parāoa) has the largest brain of any creature to have lived on Earth. Though widespread, the waters off Kaikōura remain one of the few places worldwide where these elusive creatures are found close to shore year-round.

Jan Finlayson is an advocate for outdoor access and after years of leadership and advocacy, her contribution has been awarded with an Outdoor Access Champion Award. However, there’s more to Jan that just paper roads!

Despite its urban location, in the heart of Christchurch Pūtaringamotu/Riccarton Bush is a vibrant forest alive with history, flora and fauna. As the last remnant of alluvial podocarp forest on the lower Canterbury Plains, it is filled with magnificent taonga.

With its smelly reputation and equally unimpressive looks, the critically endangered New Zealand fish guts plant will likely never make it on a tourism poster or a commemorative stamp. Still, this curious little plant deserves our attention.

Scary reputation aside, the ugly yet noble lamprey has survived for millions of years but is now under threat nationwide. An important taonga species for Māori, it’s hoped new monitoring techniques will be able to shed light on their numbers locally.

Reintroduced over the past 14 years through a series of translocations, Canterbury’s inland valleys are again home to small populations of mohua (yellowhead), the sparrow-sized songsters with bright yellow heads and breasts that grace the $100 banknote, after fears they had been lost forever.

Kaikōura’s Banded Dotterel Study continues to shine a light on the serious plight of New Zealand’s inconspicuous endemic shorebird, pohowera, which is being pushed towards extinction because of severe ongoing decline.

Trees for Canterbury is not a standard plant nursery. Manager Steve Bush shares his passion for the not-for-profit organisation, whose mission is to employ disadvantaged people in the community, teach environmental awareness and cultivate native plants for regeneration.

Kelp is a common enough sight on our coastlines, particularly when big storms out at sea bring clumps of it drifting to shore. It is no more than seaweed on a Sunday beach walk for most of us, but Christchurch woman Daneen Morgan has built a business on kelp and is hard at work developing a range of ‘wildly natural’ marine-based health and beauty products.