Michael Szabo

Michael Szabo is the author of Wild Wellington Ngā Taonga Taiao and Native Birds of Aotearoa (Te Papa Press, 2021 & 2024), editor of Birds New Zealand magazine, a Wilderness magazine columnist, and writes on environmental issues for Greenpeace Aotearoa.
He was the principal author of Wild Encounters: A Forest & Bird guide to discovering NZ’s unique wildlife (Penguin, 2009), and a principal author of New Zealand Birds Online (2013). A former editor of Forest & Bird and Greenpeace magazines, he has also written about natural history and conservation issues for New Scientist, New Zealand Geographic, and Sunday Star Times.
He has worked in senior roles for conservation and environmental organisations, as campaigns manager at Greenpeace Aotearoa, communications manager at BirdLife International and Forest & Bird, and as founding director of Pew Charitable Trust’s Kermadecs Ocean Sanctuary Project. He also wrote Making Waves I & II (Reed Books, 1991; Greenpeace, 2021), on the history of Greenpeace campaigns in Aotearoa, the South Pacific and Antarctica (1971-2020), and A history of nuclear testing in the Pacific (Greenpeace, 2025).
His photography has been published in Wild Wellington, and in Forest & Bird, Birds New Zealand, Wilderness, New Zealand Geographic and Greenpeace magazines.

• RNZ

The nature capital, interviewed by Leigh Hopkinson for Wilderness magazine