Brand new edition of Wild Dunedin

From moths to mountains, lichens to lizards, mayflies to whales Wild Dunedin: The natural history of New Zealand’s wildlife capital explores the spectacular and diverse natural world of Dunedin City and its environs.

Otago University Press has published this brand new edition of the Neville Peat & Brian Patrick classic. No other single book so comprehensively draws together all the major features of the region’s habitats, plants, animals, birds and insects.

Wild Dunedin won the Natural Heritage Category of the inaugural Montana New Zealand Book Awards in 1996. This new edition features stunning additional images and a wealth of new information.

‘Dunedin City is a biodiversity hot spot,’ says co-author Neville Peat, ‘encompassing an area of 3350 square kilometres. Within this catchment there is an incredible variety of habitat, from coastal areas with albatrosses and penguins to subalpine communities, and everything in between: wetlands, shrublands and forests.

‘Many facts about this stunning environment are not widely known. There are, for example, 30 plants and animals living within the city boundaries that are found nowhere else in the world,’ says Neville.

‘When many of New Zealand’s special ecosystems are under an alarming and increasing pressure from development it is timely to catalogue, understand and appreciate what is left of our corner of New Zealand,’ says co-author Brian Patrick.

WILD DUNEDIN The natural history of New Zealand’s wildlife capital  By Neville Peat & Brian Patrick   ISBN 978-1-877578-62-5, $40  www.otago.ac.nz/press www.facebook.com/OtagoUniversityPress

Neville Peat is an award-winning New Zealand nature writer and biographer. His books also cover genres such as history, geography and the environment. In 2007 he was awarded New Zealand’s largest literary prize, the Creative New Zealand Michael King Writers’ Fellowship, for a book about the Tasman Sea. He lives on the Otago Peninsula. Brian Patrick is the co-author of several books on natural history and invertebrates. He has worked for the Department of Conservation as a senior manager in museums, and now works as a scientist in an ecological consultancy in Christchurch.