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Thursday 10 April 2025
Sitting beside her newborn son’s hospital bed, laptop balanced on her knees, Rachel Barclay could have been forgiven for putting her dreams on hold. Instead, she adapted, choosing to study through long, uncertain days in the neonatal ward, determined not to lose sight of her goals.
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Professor Barbara Burlingame.
Last updated: Tuesday 22 March 2022
This appointment is a continuation of her role at Massey University, moving from her adjunct professorship with the School of Health Sciences to the Riddet Institute. Her expertise in sustainable diets, food security and nutrition will be of great benefit to the research programmes at the institute, particularly the Sustainable Nutrition InitiativeTM.
Distinguished Professor Harjinder Singh, Director of the Riddet Institute, says Professor Burlingame brings her strong connections and expert knowledge on nutrition and sustainability.
“Her appointment will further strengthen the institute’s ability to collaborate across the world. Her strategic advice into the Riddet Institute and its Sustainable Nutrition InitiativeTM will be invaluable.”
Professor Burlingame is a nutrition scientist, an independent consultant and advisor to several international bodies. She has a PhD from Massey University and undergraduate degrees from University of California, Davis (nutrition science and environmental toxicology).
Professor Burlingame is a member of the High-Level Panel of Experts Steering Committee on World Food Security, chair of the International Union of Nutritional Sciences Task Force on Sustainable Diets and specialty chief editor of Frontiers in Nutrition. She was the recipient of the 2021 Ancel and Margaret Keys award for her work on sustainable diets and biodiversity for food and nutrition.
Professor Burlingame says her interests and international activities align well with the Riddet Institute, particularly in the area of sustainable nutrition.
“While chief of nutrition at Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), I had the occasion to invite Riddet personnel to be involved in important international expert consultations on several critical nutrition topics. Their involvement was always highly valued.”
From her work in the late 1980s through to 1998 as a scientist in one of the Crown Research Institutes, to her current international work with FAO and other UN bodies, her interactions with Riddet Institute staff has been a constant feature, she adds.
Professor Burlingame’s work with the Riddet Institute will focus on sustainable diets and sustainable food systems.
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Originally from Malaysia and growing up in the Philippines, Rhema Chatiya Nantham decided she wanted to move to New Zealand for university. Spoilt for choice, she has a very straightforward reason for choosing Massey.
“I chose Massey simply because the name of the degree was different to all other universities – Bachelor of Business Studies (BBS), compared to Bachelor of Commerce. I thought this was a straightforward degree name and its difference would give me an edge when I applied for jobs.”
Fast forward to her final year majoring in Finance, Rhema was in a leadership class being taught by Dr Farah Palmer when she came to the sudden realisation that actually, this was what she wanted to pursue: a career in leadership.
“I signed up for a Master’s in Business Studies (MBS) and majored in Management to pursue leadership research. The whole experience was exciting and exhilarating. I had found my passion – women in leadership.”
After finishing her MBS, Rhema took on a role at Massey helping to manage the Young Women in Leadership programme, she then helped to launch the Strengths@Massey programme and the Kahurei programme.
When the role finished, Rhema and her husband moved around New Zealand for different jobs and experiences, but ever since her discovery of leadership studies, she knew she wanted her career to revolve around running leadership development programmes for women and helping women grow. In 2019, Rhema decided it was time to make that happen, so she committed to a PhD.
“My research learns from the experiences of women who grew up as ‘third culture kids’ to advance global leadership development by understanding the challenges that these children experience with each international move.
My research gives a voice to an underrepresented group because all my participants are women of colour, who have spent significant parts of their youth living in different countries.
They share their life stories, which are understood through a critical race feminist lens to appreciate the racist, sexist challenges they experienced from a young age and the coping strategies they used to adapt into their new socio-cultural contexts.”
Rhema feels blessed to have so many strong and influential women in her life, many of whom she has met along her Massey journey.
“My best friend is one of the first people I met at Massey. Ten years on, our friendship is stronger, and we have seen each other through every phase of our womanhood.
I believe that I can learn from every woman who is in my life and the beauty of being a woman is that we get to share our unique definition of womanhood and support each other.”
For Rhema, International Women’s Day is a universal reminder to recognise and celebrate women’s achievements and plights.
“It should be part of our everyday culture to celebrate diversity and provide platforms and opportunities to share. Our stories are our most valuable assets because they are unique to us, and we can only learn from one another through telling our stories.”
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A collaborative initiative between Massey University Students’ Association (MUSA), Museum Studies staff and students, and Beam and Flamingo scooters saw students scooting around sculptures and heritage buildings in the Turitea Heritage Precinct on Wednesday 2 March.
The idea came from Ramola Duncan, Events Lead at MUSA, who contacted Dr Susan Abasa in Museum Studies.
“We were looking to collaborate with Beam and Flamingo scooters to schedule a campus tour to show art, sculptures and buildings that might have significance, so I contacted Dr Abasa who jumped at the chance to be involved,” Ms Duncan says.
“I loved the idea of scooting around art. Ramola’s idea was just terrific,” Dr Abasa says. “Ramola was keen to involve students, which is how Lara Morgan and Charlotte Donovan became involved. Lara is just starting a PGDip Museum Studies and Charlotte has just finished. Together they hosted the tour and helped introduce the detailed information.
Charlotte says that she and fellow student Lara led the tour for new and existing Massey students. “This tour provided the opportunity to showcase various buildings and sculptures of note around the campus, and also provide a creative orientation for new students. The students rode on Flamingo and Beam scooters, which were kindly provided for the tour.”
The 30-minute tour had 15 students on the electric scooters. A detailed brochure was prepared to accompany the tour.
“I already had some information and photos for the sculptures as well as information about the heritage buildings,” says Dr Abasa. “Once we had narrowed the list of the places we would visit, I got more information from Tāmiro (Massey Library), Manawatū Heritage and DigitalNZ.
The team involved might be keen to do something similar for semester two.
“Heritage refers to what has been inherited from the past and guides us toward the future. We contribute to its endurance by being here, learning from it and making it part of our lives,” Dr Abasa says.
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By Dr Negar Partow
In February 2022 the Russian military attacked Ukraine under the leadership of President Vladimir Putin. There was no report or image about any women being involved in the process of decision making or being allowed to object to Putin’s ambitious plans for Ukraine.
The decision to attack Ukraine was made exclusively by men. Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the President of Ukraine is also a male, and responded to Russia’s aggression with a typical everyday narrative of defence.
Both leaders are sensationalist in their speeches. In the three speeches that Putin held last week, emotional themes such as patriotism, loyalty, sacrifice, and brotherhood were regularly evoked. President Zelenskyy speaks with the same emotional language – asking for more guns, military equipment, human resources, and financial resources, to respond to Russian military aggression with aggression. There is also no female voice in Ukraine leadership. There is not even a question about an alternative view. We live in a man’s world in which aggression is only responded to with aggression.
This exclusion of women‘s voices, and obsessively focusing on aggression as the only tool for security and liberation, is not limited to the discourses of the conflicting parties. The exclusion of women is a systematic process that not only results in the continuation of war, but also feeds into the competition over hegemony, and that is what we have witnessed in responses to Russian aggression.
Soon after the invasion, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) announced an emergency meeting. The leaders of all the permanent members of the UNSC are men – Xi Jinping (China), Emmanuel Macron (France), Vladimir Putin (Russia), Boris Johnson (UK), and Joe Biden (US). There are only two female representatives on the Council – Barbara Woodward from the UK and Linda Thomas-Greenfield from the US. According to the UNSC website, from 2015-2021 only 19.05 per cent of representatives on the Council were women, but even more disturbingly, only 14 per cent of chairs of committees and working groups in UNSC have been women. This percentage is much lower in chairing meeting and workshop groups that make vital decisions for global peace and security. This gender inequality is much the same for the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO).
Both the UNSC and NATO claim to be “committed” to the inclusion of women in peace and security discussions, but this claim is far from reality. The UNSC unanimously signed resolution 1325 in the year 2000 (22 years ago) that committed the Council to three pillars of “protection, prevention and participation”, none of which have been prioritised or materialised except in minor changes in setting up United Nations (UN) refugee camps.
Twenty-two years after the signing of the resolution that was supposed to identify women as active agents rather than passive targets of wars, women are more than ever the passive recipients of war. During the last two weeks of attacks, over 1.5 million Ukrainians have been displaced, most of them women and children. The vital point of the resolution, to allow women’s voice and ideas for peace to be heard and taken seriously in international security environments, are institutionally undermined. The resolution of the UNSC on Russia’s aggression was vetoed by Russia, and the issue was silenced until it can come back to the Council. No Ukrainian women’s group, Russian women’s group or any international organisation that works for women was present in the meeting. Women were silenced by the system once again. This lack of attention is, however, not only an issue for the UNSC.
NATO is another major international organisation that has promised gender equality and inclusion of the voices of women in their decision-making process. In November 2021, NATO published a statement hailing the efforts of the organisation in including women’s voices in peace and security, and lauding the nine additional resolutions that the organisation has signed for promoting inclusiveness.
In the statement, NATO claimed to be integrating gender perspectives in its “three core tasks of collective defence, crisis management and cooperative security”. Although the initiatives are highly admirable on paper, NATO’s promise of integration is yet to occur. 0nly six out of 30 permanent representatives on NATO’s council are women. These are predominantly representatives from small liberal democracies in Europe, including Denmark, the Netherlands and Montenegro. Only very recently were there women representatives from France, the UK, and the US. None of these countries have a woman leader.
Similar to Putin’s rhetoric and that of the Ukraine president, the solution from NATO was to “defend” (read aggressive military operation). There was, however, no discussion whatsoever about the impact of a full-scale war on women, or the ways in which women could participate in peace negotiations.
We are certainly far from gender equality in the international security environment. This is particularly important for thinking about global security and the ideological positions of the states that obsessively and exclusively focus on accumulation of power and hegemonic desires.
In achieving these hegemonic desires, women’s voices are excluded. Including women’s voices could change the aim of international security from power competition and dominance to a more balanced ideological position that pays attention to human security and prevention of conflicts.
Dr Negar Partow is a Senior Lecturer in Security Studies in the Centre for Defence and Security Studies at Massey University.
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The latest Massey University Home Affordability Report shows an overall decline in national affordability over the most recent quarter, largely driven by soaring house prices in most regions and an increasing interest rate.
The report, which covers the quarter from August 2021 to November 2021, shows median house prices across the country increased by 8.8 per cent in aggregate. This, combined with an increase in interest rate, has seen national home affordability decline by 24 per cent.
National house price-to-income ratios have declined this quarter, with house prices moving from 12.8 to 13.8 times the average annual wage.
Report authors, Dr Arshad Javed and Professor Graham Squires from the Massey University Real Estate Analysis Unit (REAU), say the results show home affordability in New Zealand continues to decline.
“In this quarter we have seen a decline in affordability. If we take an annual view, there’s a solid decline in affordability at a national level of 38.2 per cent, reflected in all 16 regions,” Professor Squires says.
“Within this aggregate result, there are some large regional changes, including 93.4 and 88.1 per cent decline in affordability for the Taranaki and Gisborne regions respectively over the past year, and more than 35 per cent decline in affordability for the remaining twelve regions,” he adds.
The greatest increase in median house prices, in percentage terms, has for the last quarter occurred in Gisborne (37 per cent or $185,000), Hawke’s Bay (18.6 per cent or $130,000), West Coast (16.7 per cent or $50,000) and Northland (14.6 per cent or $95,000). All sixteen regions showed an increase in house prices in this quarter, with the exception of Marlborough (-19.4 per cent or -$170,000).
Read the full December 2021 Home Affordability Report here.
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New Zealand decriminalised sex work in 2003 with the Prostitution Reform Act. Almost 20 years later, how have ideas about the sex industry changed?
Dr Gwyn Easterbrook-Smith is a tutor at the School of Humanities, Media and Creative Communication on Massey University’s Wellington campus. Their new book Producing the Acceptable Sex Worker considers this question by looking at how sex workers have been discussed in the news media.
“I’m interested in looking at media representations because for a lot of people, that’s one of the main places they learn about the sex industry,” Dr Easterbrook-Smith says. “Most sex workers carefully manage who they tell about their jobs, because of the stigma which is still attached to the work. So, many people either don’t know, or don’t know that they know, a sex worker. That lack of personal knowledge or experience makes the media a really important site where ideas about the industry can be reproduced or challenged.”
Dr Easterbrook-Smith’s research found that post-decriminalisation, some sex workers were increasingly presented as acceptable or respectable, but that acceptability was highly contingent and not available to all sex workers.
“While obviously people of all genders do sex work, I found that women, both trans and cisgender, were vastly more likely to be discussed in coverage of sex work, which I think is important to note since a lot of the narratives around the work are quite gendered,” Dr Easterbrook-Smith says.
Sex worker rights organisations often focus on the idea that sex work is work, and this came through in some media coverage of sex work in Aotearoa New Zealand – although this was more likely to be the case if the women involved were cisgender, charged relatively higher prices, and worked indoors.
“When sex workers did have their work treated as a real job, this was often accompanied by an explicit or implicit comparison to other sex workers, suggesting the stigma of the job may just be shifted around rather than genuinely reduced.
“Sex workers who continued to be stigmatised in news media coverage were often those who were marginalised in other ways – transgender women, particularly those who do street-based sex work, and migrant sex workers, who are specifically excluded from the protections of the Prostitution Reform Act.
“The ways that they were stigmatised as sex workers were often linked to other groups which they were also a part of. This really highlights the importance of paying attention to the multifaceted nature of people’s identities, that is, taking an intersectional approach, to discussing sex work.”
Producing the Acceptable Sex Worker also discusses the persistent influence of stereotypes about sex work, which influence the sort of stories that are told about sex work, even when the stories are being refuted.
“One thing I found quite a lot in some of the older texts I analysed, dating from the earlier 2010s, was an emphasis on people not ‘looking like’ a sex worker. Well, what do you mean by that? What does a sex worker look like? And obviously the intention there is that the reader is going to understand this as a positive thing, but in doing that, you’re reinforcing the idea that ‘sex worker’ is this negative identity which people should distance themselves from. What you’re seeing there is the comparison between different kinds of sex workers, but also the issue where old stereotypes about the industry can be really limiting, shaping how it’s discussed, even in fairly positive coverage.”
Producing the Acceptable Sex Worker, published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, is available on pre-order now from Amazon.
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By Professor Mohan Dutta.
One of the mainstream liberal responses to the #Convoy22NZ protests are the calls for dialogue. These calls, emerging from a wide array of mainstream sources, including the Human Rights Commissioner, suggest that dialogue promotes social cohesion. They build upon the idea of dialogue to suggest a middle ground that is to be achieved through listening to all communities, preventing polarisation.
Implicit in this dominant framing is the “both sides” logic, with dialogue serving as a resource for developing mutual understanding between the two differing sides.
But what exactly is the middle ground when democracies are faced with viral disinformation campaigns, organised by powerful political and economic interests, leveraging the profiteering logics of platform capitalism?
What exactly are the registers of dialogue when dealing with a protest that is propelled and co-opted by disinformation and hate, deeply rooted in the ideological apparatus of white supremacy seeking to seed chaos and capture power by undermining democratic institutions? What message does the performance of dialogue with campaigns fed by white supremacy send out to Māori, Pacific, and ethnic communities who are the targets of the hate perpetuated by the far-right? In the backdrop of the Christchurch terror attack, what message does dialogue with a protest fuelled by white supremacy send to Muslims in Aotearoa New Zealand who continue to grapple with the trauma of the violence?
Antithetical to the idea of building social cohesion, superficial attempts at listening and dialogue mainstream the far-right, giving the far-right credibility and the opportunity to grow. The irony is profound that the reference to “listening to communities—all communities” in the calls for dialogue covering the statements by the Human Rights Commissioner refer to the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Christchurch attack targeting Muslims and migrants.
Situate this irony in the backdrop of the voices of Muslims in Aotearoa New Zealand, who continue to highlight the erasure of Muslim voices and the unresponsiveness of the Crown structures to Muslim voices documenting and raising concerns about Islamophobic hate. In an Official Information Act response to Christchurch youth advocate Josiah Tualamali’i, Crown Law, the organisation responsible for drafting the terms of the Royal Commission inquiry, stated “in drafting the terms of reference Crown Law did not consult with Muslim community leaders, and or victims of the attacks.”
The uncritical and celebratory view of dialogue as a human right reflects the whiteness of the mainstream approaches to dialogue, upholding as universal the values of the dominant white culture. Instead of building registers for justice that are attentive to the inequalities that constitute communicative spaces, the upholding of facile dialogue as panacea reproduces and magnifies the disinformation and hate perpetuated by white supremacists.
The protest is shaped by disinformation and hate that is being seeded and circulated by right-wing white supremacist hate infrastructures, connected to and imported from the Trump-aligned fascist communicative infrastructures in the United States. Note the convergence in strategies between #Convoy22NZ and the Capitol riots calling for citizen-led arrests of policymakers, jailing them, and carrying out executions.
Counterspin media, a platform that has been covering the protests and feeding protestors with disinformation, is a key media resource in the mobilisation of the protest.
As observed by digital activist Byron Clark, who spent a week at Massey’s Center for Culture-centered Approach to Research and Evaluation (CARE) last year as an Activist-in-residence, co-writing a white paper on resisting digital hate, Counterspin Media Limited is streamed on the Steve Bannon-led GTV network and is a key resource in organising and circulating disinformation and hate here in Aotearoa New Zealand. In spite of multiple early warning signs about the presence of this hate infrastructure, the Crown has largely been unresponsive, and digital platforms have continued to profit from the virality of hate content. This is particularly disappointing in the backdrop of the rhetoric of the Christchurch Call.
The host of the platform, Kelvyn Alp, has actively promoted disinformation and hate propaganda. He has called for the #Convoy22 protestors to storm parliament and arrest Members of Parliament, making multiple references to killing them. On Counterspin Media, he states on March 2, “Can you imagine if a few boys brought out of their boot a few AK-47s? Those muppets would have run for the hills. That’s the problem. You disarm a population under a false flag so they can then come and eviscerate you.”
He is joined by other white supremacists Brett Power, Philip Arps, Damien De Ment, and the white nationalist group Action Zealandia.
Consider the Christchurch conspiracy video circulated by Counterspin Media amidst the protest coverage claiming the falsehood that the Christchurch terrorist attack was a false flag.
White supremacists systematically target indigenous and other minority communities with disinformation and hate propaganda. White supremacist propaganda targeted at black, Indigenous people of colour (BIPOC) communities seeds chaos and catalyses the multiplication of disinformation and hate. Consider for instance the role of white supremacists in the US in co-opting #BlackLivesMatter protests and organising violence.
These propaganda infrastructures operate largely on digital platforms such as Telegram, Facebook and Twitter.
Simultaneously, they create and craft spectacles that draw mainstream media attention, further perpetuating the disinformation. The production of the spectacle therefore is a key strategy in placing onto the mainstream the discursive registers for disinformation and hate.
Communication is constituted by colonial, raced, classed, gendered inequalities.
Calls for dialogue that erase these inequalities uphold the power and control of the coloniser. A framework of dialogue rooted in justice recognises these communicative inequalities and seeks to build infrastructures for the voices of the margins.
Just dialogues would need to begin with developing culture-centered pedagogies for communities at the margins that challenge the disinformation and hate, created and led by communities at the margins.
Across digital platforms, I have witnessed a number of anti-racist Māori activists and leaders such as Tame Iti, Marise Lant, and Matthew Tukaki who have taken the leadership in countering the disinformation catalysing the protests. They have been doing this work continually, engaging communities in critical conversations.
They have simultaneously been doing the work of building critical pedagogy on an ongoing basis, exposing the underlying ideology of white supremacist hate driving the protests.
Respecting the commitments of Te Tiriti would put Māori leadership at the heart of any strategy of dialogue and social cohesion.
Respecting the voices of Muslims in Aotearoa New Zealand who have in recent years borne disproportionately the burden of violence emerging from white supremacy would centre the voices of Muslims, particularly Muslims at the intersectional margins in building solutions for social cohesion.
Moreover, the infrastructures for listening to the voices of the raced, classed, colonial margins in the context of the #Convoy22NZ protest would attend to the ways in which the whiteness of the Crown’s COVID-19 response has produced interpenetrating forms of marginalisation, seeking to build solutions that address the economic disenfranchisement resulting from policies.
Partnering with and supporting the leadership of communities at the margins as the drivers of solutions is going to be vital to countering the Trumpian infrastructure of disinformation and hate that has planted its roots in Aotearoa New Zealand.
Professor Mohan Dutta is Dean’s Chair Professor of Communication. He is the Director of the Center for Culture-Centered Approach to Research and Evaluation (CARE), developing culturally-centered, community-based projects of social change, advocacy, and activism that articulate health as a human right.
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Six freeskiing and snowboarding athletes with Massey connections recently took part in the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing.
Bachelor of Business student Chloe McMillan, Ngāpuhi, represented New Zealand in the women’s freeski halfpipe. She says the atmosphere was amazing despite daily COVID-19 testing.
“It was a dream come true and being able to be one of a select group of Kiwis who gets to wear the fern as an Olympian was a feeling I’ll never forget.”
The ability to study as a distance student was exactly what Chloe needed as a full-time athlete.
“From what I had heard, Massey had the best distance programmes in the country. Flexibility and help for someone who is also training in high performance sport was the top of the priority list for me, and before even starting my first ever semester I have had bucket loads of help.
“I got onto things prior to the Games, met my lecturers via email, figured out my timetables, ordered stationery and got all the e-books I needed. The day I got off the plane from China I went straight into studying, so being ultra-prepared was a must. I have also had a tonne of support from Tamara from the Academy of Sport, who has made doing all of the above a breeze.”
Chloe says her family have been her biggest supporters throughout her Olympics journey.
“Being a completely self-funded athlete, I wouldn’t have been able to make my dreams possible without them.”
Freeskier Ben Barclay is studying towards a Bachelor of Business and is a 2022 Massey University Elite Sports Bursary recipient. He says being in the finals during his first Olympic Games was incredible.
“The Olympic Games was like nothing else I’ve experienced before. It wasn’t until we walked into the opening ceremony that I realised the true magnitude of the event and how much it can bring people together. Being in the start-gate with so many of my childhood idols and wearing the Olympic rings on my bib was something I will cherish forever.”
Ben gives credits to Massey for giving him the support and flexibility to juggle both study and a professional sport career.
“I just fit study in whenever I have free time, whether that’s in the afternoons post-training, or on a plane to the next event. It means you have to make a conscious effort to manage your time to fit in both aspects of student-athlete life.
“Massey has been great in helping me keep sport a top priority while still planning for a future post-sport. Their flexibility has allowed me to focus solely on skiing when I need to and then shift to focusing on study.
“I have a very long-list of people I would like to thank. Without so many wonderful and supportive people in my life I would not be able to achieve these childhood dreams.”
Bachelor of Science student Cool Wakushima also represented New Zealand in the women’s snowboard slopestyle.
High Performance Coordinator Tamara Scott-Valath says it was amazing watching Massey student-athletes compete at such a large international event.
“I’m fully aware of the efforts they put in to balancing their academic study and their sporting commitments, and seeing them achieve a major life-time goal of competing at an Olympic Games shows just how dedicated they are.
“It’s really nice to know that Massey has been able to play a part in ensuring these athletes are able to work towards a qualification while still competing at the highest level in their sport.”
Massey University also wishes past student Corey Peters who is heading off to the 2022 Paralympic Winter Games in Beijing all the best.
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April 2, 2025
A joint event hosted by EIT and the Hawke’s Bay Regional Council gave people a rare glimpse into the nocturnal world of moths.
The nighttime event, held at Pekapeka Wetland Regional Park in February to celebrate World Wetlands Month, highlighted the insects’ vital role in New Zealand ecosystems.
EIT Environmental Studies graduate Ryan Bauckham and Environmental Management Lecturer Dr Amelia McQueen led the event. Amelia said the evening was an eye-opener, particularly for adults who initially attended for their children’s benefit but soon became fascinated themselves.
EIT Environmental Studies graduate Ryan Bauckham shared his knowledge of moths at an event at Pekapeka Wetland Regional Park. Photo/Amelia McQueen.
“Some adults brought their kids thinking they’d be most excited, but they quickly became just as engrossed,” she said.
A highlight of the evening was Ryan’s impressive collection of pinned moths, displayed in glass cases to illustrate their diverse colours, shapes, and sizes. Even more captivating were the live moths attracted by special lights, revealing vibrant colours and intricate patterns.
Among those observed was Hygraula nitens, known as the pond moth, which lays eggs underwater and spends most of its lifecycle among aquatic plants. Another intriguing species was the flax notch maker (Ichneutica steropastis), whose larvae create distinctive V-shaped notches along harakeke leaves.
The event also explored how native New Zealand plants evolved to attract moths, their primary pollinators. Amelia said that many native plants have small, white, often fragrant flowers specifically designed to attract nocturnal insects.
“White flowers are more visible at night, and their scent draws in moths. These insects play a crucial role in pollinating native plants, supporting entire ecosystems,” she said.
Amelia says attendees described the evening as “engaging” and “fascinating,” and each received a custom-made moth badge, created by EIT’s IDEASchool.
Beyond the public event, Ryan and Amelia are conducting ongoing research studying moth diversity in remnant podocarp forests across Central Hawke’s Bay. Funded by Biodiversity Hawke’s Bay and EIT, the research aims to document local moth species and explore how habitat quality influences their populations.
Ryan has spent months conducting meticulous fieldwork, often working late nights documenting moth activity in forests such as Otaia/Lindsay’s Bush, Elsthorpe Scenic Reserve and several QEII blocks. The study is among the first in Hawke’s Bay to investigate the relationship between forest size, ecological health, and moth diversity.
“We still don’t fully know what moth species exist in these forests. This research is critical for future conservation and management efforts,” Amelia said.
Data collection will conclude by mid-April, with findings analysed throughout the year. A research paper or detailed report is expected either late this year or early next year, with results shared among stakeholders including the Department of Conservation, Hawke’s Bay Regional Council, Central Hawke’s Bay District Council and landowners.
Given the event’s success, Amelia said more public sessions may be planned in the coming months.
“We’ve already had requests to do this again,” she said.