Located off the eastern edge of Australia, New Zealand has a fairly moderate climate that comes from conflicting warm, humid Pacific and colder Antarctic weather. It is similar to New Guinea, with rugged terrain, high mountains, and habitats from grassy open plains to dense forests, wet areas to near-deserts. Unlike New Guinea, however, New Zealand has been occupied and developed by humans for hundreds of years. Before large-scale agriculture, about half of New Zealand was covered with forests and one-third with grassland communities. Now half is pasture for grazing, and one quarter is forest, mostly introduced species. Much of the remaining native forest is maintained as national parks and reserves. Pastureland usually consists of a single species of grass and does not support the wide variety of bird and animal life of the original grassland communities. There are more than four thousand species of beetles, two thousand species of flies, and fifteen hundred species of butterflies and moths. In a reversal of the usual ecological concerns, some native insects are destroying introduced pasture grasses.
See also: Fiji Islands, Coral Atolls, Future Prospects
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