Because of its far-flung outlying islands and long coastline, the country has extensive marine resources. Since 1937, the islands are uninhabited except for about six people at Raoul Island station. In 1830, mapmakers began to use “North” and “South” on their maps to distinguish the two largest islands, and by 1907, this was the accepted norm. Māori had several traditional names for the two main islands, including Te Ika-a-Māui (‘the fish of Māui’) for the North Island and Te Waipounamu (‘the waters of greenstone’) or Te Waka o Aoraki (‘the canoe of Aoraki’) for the South Island.

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New Zealand art and craft has gradually achieved an international audience, with exhibitions in the Venice Biennale in 2001 and the “Paradise Now” exhibition in New York in 2004. Certain items of popular culture thought to be unique to New Zealand are called “Kiwiana”. In the 1960s, as tertiary education became more available, and cities expanded urban culture began to dominate, but rural imagery and themes are common in New Zealand’s art, literature and media. From the early 20th century until the late 1960s, Māori culture was suppressed by the attempted assimilation of Māori into British New Zealanders. More recently, American, Australian, Asian and other European cultures have exerted influence on New Zealand.

Country Description

Māori developed a varied musical tradition around songs and chants, including ceremonial performances, laments, and love songs. Although still largely influenced by global trends (modernism) and events (the Great Depression), writers in the 1930s began to develop stories increasingly focused on their experiences in New Zealand. Most early English literature was obtained from Britain, and it was not until the 1950s when local publishing outlets increased that New Zealand literature started to become widely known. However, the local fashion industry has grown significantly since 2000, doubling exports and increasing from a handful to about 50 established labels, with some labels gaining international recognition. Standards have since relaxed and New Zealand fashion has received a reputation for being casual, practical and lacklustre.
New Zealand is a member of the Five Eyes intelligence sharing agreement, known formally as the UKUSA Agreement. Today, New Zealand enjoys particularly close relations with the United States and is one of its major non-NATO allies, as well as with Australia, with a “Trans-Tasman” identity between citizens of the latter being common. The country is a member of the United Nations, the Commonwealth of Nations and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and participates in the Five Power Defence Arrangements.
The Māori were the first people to reach New Zealand, followed by the early European settlers. While the demonym for a New Zealand citizen is New Zealander, the informal “Kiwi” is commonly used both internationally and by locals. For legacy systems which can only accept one ethnicity, people are usually allocated to a single ethnicity based on a pre-determined priority order, with Māori given highest priority and New Zealand European given lowest priority. Statistics New Zealand allows people to choose multiple ethnicities and reports ethnic data based on total responses, therefore ethnicities add up to more than 100%. The median age of the New Zealand population at the 2018 census was 37.4 years, with life expectancy in 2017–2019 being 80.0 years for males and 83.5 years for betista casino login females.

New Zealand Government

New Zealand is a constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary democracy, although its constitution is not codified. Marine mammals are abundant, with almost half the world’s cetaceans (whales, dolphins, and porpoises) and large numbers of fur seals reported in New Zealand waters. Three species of bats (one since extinct) were the only sign of native land mammals in New Zealand until the 2006 discovery of bones from a unique, mouse-sized land mammal at least 16 million years old. Much of the remaining forest fell after European settlement, being logged or cleared to make room for pastoral farming, leaving forest occupying only 23% of the land in 1997. Before humans arrived, an estimated 80% of the land was covered in forest, with only high alpine, wet, infertile and volcanic areas without trees. The two main types of forest are those dominated by broadleaf trees with emergent podocarps, or by southern beech in cooler climates.
Because of its long isolation from the rest of the world, New Zealand has unique flora. The tallest peak on North Island is Mount Ruapehu (2,797 m), an active, cone-shaped volcano. South Island is dominated by the Southern Alps, the highest peak of which is Aoraki/Mount Cook, at 3,754 m. New Zealand aligned itself with the allied nations in World War I, World War II, and the Korean War. Maori legends describe South Island as a canoe and North Island as a fish.

New Zealand Economy

New Zealand became a dominion in 1907; it gained full statutory independence in 1947, retaining the monarch as head of state. In 1840, representatives of the United Kingdom and Māori chiefs signed the Treaty of Waitangi, which paved the way for Britain’s declaration of sovereignty later that year and the establishment of the Crown Colony of New Zealand in 1841. In 1769 the British explorer Captain James Cook became the first European to set foot on and map New Zealand.

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About 82% of New Zealand’s indigenous vascular plants are endemic, covering 1,944 species across 65 genera. Physical isolation has caused biological isolation, resulting in a dynamic evolutionary ecology with examples of distinctive plants and animals as well as populations of widespread species. Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch all receive a yearly average of more than 2,000 hours of sunshine. Of the seven largest cities, Christchurch is the driest, receiving on average only 618 millimetres (24.3 in) of rain per year. Conditions vary sharply across regions, from extremely wet on the West Coast of the South Island to semi-arid in Central Otago and the Mackenzie Basin of inland Canterbury and subtropical in Northland.
New Zealand participated at the Summer Olympics in 1908 and 1912 as a joint team with Australia, before first participating on its own in 1920. The Polynesian sport of waka ama racing has experienced a resurgence of interest in New Zealand since the 1980s. New Zealand is known for its extreme sports, adventure tourism and strong mountaineering tradition, as seen in the success of notable New Zealander Sir Edmund Hillary summiting Mount Everest first. Golf, netball, tennis and cricket have the highest rates of adult participation, while netball, rugby union and football (soccer) are particularly popular among young people. A hāngī is a traditional Māori method of cooking food using heated rocks buried in a pit oven that is still used for large groups on special occasions, such as tangihanga. New Zealand yields produce from land and sea—most crops and livestock, such as maize, potatoes and pigs, were gradually introduced by the early European settlers.
Queenstown is the ideal hub for your South Island adventure. Let New Zealand’s natural beauty inspire your next adventure! What current events are happening in New Zealand? How big is the New Zealand economy?
It is the sole home, for example, of the long-beaked, flightless kiwi, the ubiquitous nickname for New Zealanders. Niue and the Cook Islands are self-governing states in free association with New Zealand. New Zealand is ranked 5th in the International Cricket Council Men’s Test Team Rankings 2025 with a rating of 100. The All Blacks, the national rugby union team, are the most successful in the history of international rugby.
It is also called Aotearoa or the “Land of the Long White Cloud” in the language of the Maori (rhymes with “dowry”), the Polynesian people who settled the islands four centuries before the first Europeans arrived. New Zealand is an island country located in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. The country comprises two main islands—the North and the South Island—and a number of small islands, some of them hundreds of miles from the main group. New Zealand, island country in the South Pacific Ocean, the southwesternmost part of Polynesia. New Zealand’s population today is concentrated to the north of the country, with around 76.4% of the population living in the North Island and 23.6% in the South Island as of June 2025. New Zealand conservationists have pioneered several methods to help threatened wildlife recover, including island sanctuaries, pest control, wildlife translocation, fostering, and ecological restoration of islands and other protected areas.
New Zealand has a highly varied terrain with mountain ranges and hill country dominating the landscape. What type of government does New Zealand have? What is the population of New Zealand? Immigration from other areas—Asia, Africa, and eastern Europe—has also made a mark, and New Zealand culture today reflects these many influences. New Zealand also has a unique array of vegetation and animal life, much of which developed during the country’s prolonged isolation.

The government sold its telecommunications company, railway network, a number of radio stations, and two financial institutions. The formal relationship with the U.S. changed, in 1986, however, after the Labour government adopted an anti-nuclear position, which ended visits of American warships. New Zealand is a party to the ANZUS security treaty between Australia, New Zealand, and the U.S.
In the First World War, New Zealand recorded the highest casualties per head of population of any combatant nation. Wellington is the capital city of New Zealand, and conveniently located in the centre of the country Dubbed the ‘City of Sails’, Auckland is New Zealand’s largest city and boasts a harbour and a coast just 40 mins apart Welcome to New Zealand – Tourism.org.nz is your gateway to discovering the stunning beauty and vibrant culture of Aotearoa, New Zealand. What makes New Zealand a unique country to travel to? The North Island also has mountain ranges, and four volcanic peaks, including Mt. Ruapehu, which has been active (but not dangerous) since September 1995.
Cook mapped the main islands and the east coast of Australia, and named the country New Zealand. The Moriori people of the Chatham Islands, located to the east of the main islands, multiplied from a group of New Zealand Polynesians who traveled there by canoe in the fourteenth or fifteenth century. Conservationists recognized that threatened bird populations could be saved on offshore islands, where, once predators were exterminated, bird life flourished again. Geographically, the country consists of two large islands and a number of smaller islands.
However, British inability to protect the country from Japanese aggression in World War II began a period of American influence. Since then, the country has been a sovereign constitutional monarchy within the Commonwealth of Nations. Full independence was granted with the Statute of Westminster in 1931, which was adopted by the New Zealand parliament in 1947. The discovery of gold on South Island in 1861 sparked concerns that settlers there would form a separate colony, so in 1865 the capital was moved to the more central city of Wellington. His Constitution Act of 1853 set up a national system of representative government and a prime minister. New Zealand was initially administered as a part of the colony of New South Wales.