Moa's Ark : Invaders of the Last Ark

New Zealand, too, has cathedrals of world heritage class, but these are green and growing. Their pillars are the trunks of massive trees, and their choristers are of the feathered kind.

– David Bellamy on New Zealand's forests in part one

When New Zealand set sail all around a hundred million years ago, it was an ark, a place of survival, and carried with it many plants and animals which today occur nowhere else on earth.

– David Bellamy on New Zealand’s unique biodiversity in part one

In the terrestrial environment, there weren’t any other game species which Māori could hunt that were anything like the size of moas to deflect their attention from the hunting of moas. And furthermore, moas were extremely slow-breeding. They probably only had one or two chicks per year and perhaps didn’t breed every year. I think that was a fatal combination of factors which set them on the downward slide to extinction.

– Archaeologist on the extinction of the moa in part two

Now, I bought two things that were very important to the early Polynesians here in New Zealand. First, they brought it with them — sweet potato, or as they called it, kūmara. The other was flax, and they found it growing here. The plant is used to make many things, apart from the bag which holds the sweet potato.

– David Bellamy on plants important to early Aotearoa inhabitants in part two

This is truly one of the great wonders of the world. I'm immensely lucky to be here, and if you want proof that giant birds roamed the land of New Zealand, well, there it is — the moa's graveyard.

– David Bellamy on the discovery of moa bones in a cave in part four

You see, at the beginning of this century, the forests of New Zealand were being knocked down to make way for sheep almost as fast as the tropical rainforests are being cleared today, and sometimes with just as catastrophic results.

– David Bellamy on deforestation in New Zealand in part five