A New Zealand ecosanctuary with a 500-year plan to turn back the clock
A single mouse once redefined the borders of Zealandia. Researchers testing prototype fencing watched a rodent wrap its tail around a screw, swing its body, and haul itself over the top, a feat of gymnastics that helped engineers design the 5.3-mile barrier that now encircles this 556-acre valley above Wellington, New Zealand. Its team calls it the world’s first fully fenced urban ecosanctuary, an attempt to turn back the clock to a time before mammals ever reached these islands. For more than a century the valley supplied the capital’s drinking water, and before that it was scarred by failed gold mines and stripped for farmland. Now it is something stranger: a place where rare native birds and a reptile from the age of dinosaurs are returning, just a short cab ride from the city’s best coffee shops. But the sanctuary sits directly on a major fault line, and the woman who runs it is working toward a 500-year plan she knows she will never see completed.
