In a forested valley just minutes from downtown Wellington, our rarest native animals are thriving and living free in a unique safe haven.

In an extraordinary 500-year vision their home - a 225 hectare living ark - will be restored as closely as possible to the way it was “the day before humans arrived”.

Zealandia: the Karori Sanctuary Experience is set to be an increasingly popular stop-off for New Zealanders and international tourists. When its $16 million state-of-the-art visitor experience opens in early 2010, visitor numbers are expected to soar beyond 200,000 a year.

Mitsubishi Motors is a long-term principal partner of Zealandia. “We are very proud to be associated with such a significant, world-ranking conservation project, “ said managing director John Leighton. “The Zealandia team have demonstrated that they are just brilliant at capturing people’s imagination and leading them to a better understanding of what conservation is all about.”

Zealandia shares its new name with a lost landmass that broke away from the super-continent of Gondwana. The islands of New Zealand are nearly all that survives of this vanished continent – an isolated ark for the extraordinary survivors of Zealandia.

225 million years old but now breeding in the
Zealandia forest, the "living fossil" tuatara have been gifted by
their kaitaki, Ngati Koata
Photo copyright Karori Sanctuary

“New Zealand may call itself the youngest country on Earth, but the incredible diversity of our flora and fauna has been at least 80 million years in the making!” says Nancy McIntosh-Ward, head of Zealandia. “Our new name not only links back to this distant past, we plan to create an experience that will in turn inspire more visitors to take on the Sanctuary’s mission in their own lives."

Zealandia is the most accessible and well-established of New Zealand's celebrated mainland 'conservation islands'. Its international reputation for cutting edge conservation science, combined with its extraordinary positioning just two kilometres from central Wellington, have made the Sanctuary a Mecca for those interested in NZ’s flora and fauna.

The site became famous for the major breakthrough in conservation technology achieved in the 90s, when volunteers built the 8.6 kilometre predator-proof fence that surrounds the Sanctuary. The fence keeps out non-native animals like hedgehogs or possums and enables some of our most threatened species to thrive in regenerated native forest. (Zealandia acknowledges the Maori god of the forests in its Te Reo name - Te Māra a Tāne – which translates as ‘the garden of Tāne’).

Zealandia is open every day except Christmas Day.

Our land has had a longer period of isolation than any oceanic island.

For millions of years, as part of Gondwana, New Zealand shared flora and fauna with Australia, Africa and South America.

Noisy and comical, tuis make their presence felt among
Zealandia’s hundreds of native bird species.
Photo Paul Ramos Little. Copyright Karori Sanctuary

When continental drift caused Gondwana to break up, New Zealand separated, and as the land became more isolated, evolutionary processes resulted in a unique asemblage of plants and animals. While the rest of the world entered the age of mammals, New Zealand took a unique evolutionary path and became a place dominated by birds.

Without competition from browsing mammals, birds evolved to occupy niches that mammals occupied elsewhere with by few predators to threaten them many birds became flightless.

Then man came. Animals were hunted to extinction, forests felled, wetlands drained, grasslands ploughed. Plants and animals brought by settlers became pests. The survivors of Zealandia started to vanish.

In the face of this catastrophic loss, a national conservation movement was born - one of the most innovative and progressive in the world. Initially using our myriad offshore islands as safe havens, conservationists have struggled to slowly stem the loss of species.

Visitors to Zealandia can see for themselves the successes already achieved by this unique conservation project. Nowhere else on the mainland can students and teachers walk through hectare upon hectare of regenerating forest where rare and endangered wildlife live freely in their natural habitat.

Education is a keystone of the Sanctuary’s work, one that Mitsubishi Motors especially values. The Sanctuary offers environmental programmes that provide positive and inspiring experiences for thousands of schoolchildren: in, about and for the environment.

Programme leaders create fun, innovative, hands-on learning experiences that correlate to many of the achievement objectives in the National Curriculum.

If you have a current Mitsubishi Gold Service Card or Mitsubishi Diamond Class Service Card, take advantage of the special entry offer noted on the card. *

Allow plenty of time! There are 34 kilometres of walking tracks through regenerating forest to explore.

Pick up a map and choose where to go. Or join an experienced guide and in a two-hour tour learn about New Zealand’s treasured animals and plants and find out why Zealandia is a unique, world-first eco-attraction.

* “Two-for-one” entitles the holder of a current Gold or Diamond Class Service Card to one free entry to Zealandia – the Karori Sanctuary Experience (and to the Visitor Centre, once completed) of an equal or lesser value, when a ticket is purchased and the card is presented. Limited to one use of the card per year.

There is enormous satisfaction to be gained from helping to restore New Zealand’s natural heritage for ourselves, our children and for generations to come. You could become a member. Or join the 400+ volunteers who do incredibly valuable work. Or make a donation. Or leave a bequest.

Already members, volunteers and other supporters have helped the Sanctuary reintroduce little spotted kiwi, saddleback, hihi, tuatara, Maud Island frog and giant weta to the wild on the mainland for the first time, and re-establish wild populations of iconic species like kaka, brown teal, weka, robin, tomtit and whitehead.

“It might seem out of place to talk about car-making and conservation in the same breath”, said managing director John Leighton. “But when we first discussed the Zealandia partnership idea it quickly became apparent how much synergy there is in our thinking. At Mitsubishi, a complementary vision is giving rise to constant innovation and investment that will reduce reliance on fossil fuels, restrict emissions, reduce waste, maximise resource conservation and recycling.

“A prime example of course is the all-electric, emission-free Mitsubishi iMiEV. Early next year New Zealand will be one of the first countries in the world to host the highly anticipated Mitsubishi Innovative Electric Vehicle, which underlines the reality that a new age in transport technology is upon us.

“Meanwhile, Mitsubishi owners might be astonished at the ingenuity and investment that has already gone into cutting back their vehicle’s impact on the environment, and into making it as recyclable as possible. One small example: at our Porirua base we take apart cars that have come to the end of the road and put many thousands of components safely on to their second lives.

“So putting some extra weight behind a centre of excellence like Zealandia that so effectively promotes sustainable development – social, cultural, environmental, economical - seems utterly sensible to us.”