Moa's Ark : Building the Ark

This was just too good for a botanist to miss, a mountain that's falling apart and all its moving scree, smashed-up rocks, is home to plants that grow nowhere else on earth. And this is one of them, a buttercup with the strange name of Ranunculus haastii.

– David Bellamy on a few unique plants of New Zealand in part five

The most recent volcanic display took place only a few hundred years ago on an island called Rangitoto out in the bay.

– David Bellamy on the Rangitoto volcano in part two

At least 300 years later, Rangitoto remains an inhospitable place on which life is still finding a tenuous foothold; the pioneers are lichen and pōhutukawa, the seeds of the tree are able to germinate in damp crevices down in the rock.

– David Bellamy on Rangitoto's rugged landscape in part two

Most of the beak-heads, like the dinosaurs, disappeared millions of years ago, but not the tuatara. It's a living fossil that has been on board Moa’s Ark since its formation and will have witnessed every stage of its epic voyage. Now, wouldn't it be marvellous if we could look at the past through the tuatara’s eye?

– David Bellamy on the tuatara in part one

Early last century, a parcel was rushed to London from the other side of the world. It was delivered to the British Museum of Natural History and was addressed to the man who later went on to become its director, Sir Richard Owen. His parcel contained a single bone, but it was enough for Owen, an eminent paleontologist, to deduce that it belonged to a giant bird, and that’s how the world first came to know of it’s biggest bird: the moa, from New Zealand.

– David Bellamy on the discovery of the moa in part one

Modern farming has replaced natural diversity with monotonous uniformity. Where are all the plants and animals that used to live here? Squeezed almost out of existence into odd corners.

– David Bellamy on the impact of modern farming in part five