Wildlifeof New Zealand
Sources & photo credits
Where the species list and photos come from.
About this guide
A growing, species-first field guide to the wildlife of New Zealand: mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians. This edition lists about 390 species, some of them with photographs.
How the species list was built
The list covers native, endemic, regularly visiting and established introduced vertebrates of mainland New Zealand, Rakiura / Stewart Island, the Chatham Islands, the Subantarctic and Kermadec Islands and New Zealand's seas. Vagrants with fewer than ten accepted New Zealand records are left out. The list was first drafted with an AI assistant from the sources below and then audited against the Department of Conservation's threat classification reports; text that could not be checked is held back and listed for review. Notable invertebrates are not yet included. Mฤori names are shown where an established name is in use, with macrons.
Conservation status
Status labels are the categories of the New Zealand Threat Classification System published by the Department of Conservation (for example Nationally Critical, At Risk - Declining, Not Threatened). They describe how threatened a species is within New Zealand, which can differ from its status worldwide. Global IUCN categories are never used.
Reference sources
- Department of Conservation: threat classification reports (birds 2021, marine mammals 2024, reptiles 2025) and species and visitor information
- New Zealand Birds Online: bird accounts, names and records
- Birds New Zealand: checklist of the birds of New Zealand
- Te Ara and Te Papa: general species information and Mฤori names
- GBIF: New Zealand: occurrence records
Planning a visit
Many of New Zealand's best wildlife sites are sanctuaries, islands and breeding colonies with limited numbers, permits, closures and strict biosecurity rules, and boat trips depend on the weather. Check with the Department of Conservation or your operator before you travel rather than relying on the details here.
Wildlife sightings are never guaranteed. The species listed for each place are what is realistically possible there, not what you should expect on a given day. Keep your distance from seals, sea lions and penguins, and never feed wildlife.
Your plans and sightings
Your trip plan and sightings are saved in this browser, on this device only. We never see them. Clearing your browser data will clear them too, so download the PDF if you want a copy to keep. Email buttons open a draft in your mail app; nothing is sent until you send it.
Species descriptions
Species accounts are our own paraphrased summaries of published, openly accessible sources, mainly Wikipedia species accounts, and for snakes and other reptiles also The Reptile Database (reptile-database.reptarium.cz), with national checklists and Red Lists where cited. Each account names its source in brackets. Some are general to the species and are not specific to this country; a short entry means the sources said little, not that we left something out. We use no IUCN Red List data.
Photo credits
Photographs come from iNaturalist and Wikimedia Commons under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA licences, or were taken by the Wildlife of Everywhere team. Each one keeps its photographer's name, licence and a link to the original.
Photographs are chosen to show the species clearly, so many were taken elsewhere in its range rather than in New Zealand. Tap the i on any photograph to see who took it. The full list is below.