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mikepole.bsky.social

@mikepole.bsky.social
63 followers 68 following 97 posts
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mikepole.bsky.social @mikepole.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
www.mikepole.com/2026/07/01/m...
mikepole.com
My Submission on the Conservation Amendment Bill - MikePole
The Conservation Amendment Bill is grounded in an ideology that assumes everything of public value must ultimately be monetised, traded, or sacrificed…
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mikepole.bsky.social @mikepole.bsky.social · 25/04/2026
www.mikepole.com/2026/04/25/l...
mikepole.com
Liminal Beings in a Liminal Landscape - the Braak Iron Age 'Idols' - MikePole
Does ecology give rise to particular cosmologies? In 1947-48, two wooden figures were discovered in peat (apparently just below the surface) of…
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mikepole.bsky.social @mikepole.bsky.social · 01/04/2026
www.mikepole.com/2026/04/01/v...
mikepole.com
Volunteering in Ukraine – Making Camouflage Material in Lviv - MikePole
Traveling to Lviv Camouflage nets – in this day and age? As a kid, I grew up, painting camouflage on Second World…
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mikepole.bsky.social @mikepole.bsky.social · 18/02/2026
www.mikepole.com/2026/02/18/d...
mikepole.com
Dunedin's Bush in the early 1860s - MikePole
We’ve all read Dr Seuss’s ‘The Lorax’ – right? The Lorax spoke for the trees. In the book, Truffula Trees are seen…
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mikepole.bsky.social @mikepole.bsky.social · 23/01/2026
www.mikepole.com/2026/01/23/c...
mikepole.com
Could New Zealand's Kahikatea Grow in Australia? - MikePole
Travelling from Sydney up to Brisbane, through the lowlands, across the wetlands, crossing rivers, seeing tree ferns – I can’t help thinking…
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mikepole.bsky.social @mikepole.bsky.social · 22/01/2026
www.mikepole.com/2026/01/22/t...
mikepole.com
The Ecological Destruction of Southern New Zealand - List - MikePole
When Polynesians first discovered Aotearoa–New Zealand, much of the South Island — with few exceptions — was forested from the tree line…
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mikepole.bsky.social @mikepole.bsky.social · 21/01/2026
www.mikepole.com/2026/01/21/j...
mikepole.com
Jurassic Fossil Forests of Curio Bay, New Zealand - Series: Vegetation, Ecology, Climate - MikePole
This series brings together posts exploring the Jurassic fossil forests at Curio Bay, southermost New Zealand –  from the in-place stumps of…
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mikepole.bsky.social @mikepole.bsky.social · 19/01/2026
www.mikepole.com/2026/01/19/e...
mikepole.com
Eating out in Ukraine – is there a shortage of food?
Lana Del Rey’s ‘Summertime Sadness’ is filling the air of the restaurant in Odesa.... “Done my hair up real big, beauty queen style, High heels off, I'm feelin' alive” It’s now the third time I’ve hea...
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mikepole.bsky.social @mikepole.bsky.social · 06/01/2026
www.mikepole.com/2026/01/06/t...
mikepole.com
Three Kinds of Volcanic Ash around the Jurassic Fossil Forests of Curio Bay
The Jurassic fossil forests at Curio Bay appear to have been overwhelmed by water-lain material, not by air-fall volcanic ash. But the broader location was somewhere on a floodplain adjacent a highlan...
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mikepole.bsky.social @mikepole.bsky.social · 23/12/2025
www.mikepole.com/2025/12/23/p...
mikepole.com
Pippi Longstockings, and a Destroyed School in Kharkiv, Ukraine
In a pile of rubble in the destroyed Gymnasium No. 47 in Kharkiv (Харьковская гимназия № 47), Ukraine, I picked up a book. The school was, fortunately, not open when it was destroyed by Russia in the ...
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mikepole.bsky.social @mikepole.bsky.social · 22/12/2025
www.mikepole.com/2025/12/22/d...
mikepole.com
Dinoturbation at Curio Bay Jurassic Forest?
This year I headed down to the Jurassic fossil forests at Curio Bay, in one of the worst stretches of spring weather I’ve experienced. Lots of rain, and a high, rough sea - but I wanted to have a good...
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mikepole.bsky.social @mikepole.bsky.social · 20/12/2025
www.mikepole.com/2025/12/20/t...
mikepole.com
The Lost Totara Forests of Central Otago
In my Fifth Form year at Dunstan High School, Alexandra, my Biology Teacher was Peter Child. He retired shortly afterwards, and as his Obituary puts it (Pierce, 1986), this was a ‘liberation’! Yes, I ...
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mikepole.bsky.social @mikepole.bsky.social · 19/12/2025
www.mikepole.com/2025/12/19/b...
mikepole.com
Bioturbation near the Jurassic Fossil Forests at Curio Bay
The ‘God’ of trace fossils, Adolf ‘Dolf’ Seilacher, once visited our Geology Department, when I was an undergrad. My Prof, Doug Campbell, arranged a field trip for him, and invited me to come. We w…
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mikepole.bsky.social @mikepole.bsky.social · 15/12/2025
www.mikepole.com/2025/12/15/b...
mikepole.com
Beauprea – the last truly Gondwanan plant in New Zealand?
Thirty years ago (Pole, 1994), I suggested all of New Zealand’s current flora may have arrived over the sea, by long-distance dispersal. This was counter to a prevailing idea that at least some of …
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mikepole.bsky.social @mikepole.bsky.social · 14/12/2025
www.mikepole.com/2025/12/14/t...
mikepole.com
The Jurassic Fossil Forests at Curio Bay, New Zealand, and their connection to two remarkable English scientists
The Jurassic fossil forests at Curio Bay, southern New Zealand, have been known for at least a hundred and fifty years. They first appear to have come under scientific scrutiny in 1878, when the ge…
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mikepole.bsky.social @mikepole.bsky.social · 10/12/2025
www.mikepole.com/2025/12/10/a...
mikepole.com
Are the consequences of a fire in Tasmania 3,600 years ago, still present?
Sitting a little above the more famous lake of Cradle Mountain National Park , Tasmamia – Dove Lake, is Wombat Pool. Some tourists are confused by the name – assuming its a good place to see wombat…
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Reposted by @mikepole.bsky.social
Toby Morris @xtotl.bsky.social · 29/11/2025
Fun job to get: can design for a new Garage Project beer celebrating the incredible work of old mates Capital Kiwi Project bringing brown kiwi back into the hills of Wellington. Legends
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Reposted by @mikepole.bsky.social
Emmanuelle Chaze @emmanuellechaze.com · 21/11/2025
The key partner: kyivindependent.com/us-warns-it-...
kyivindependent.com
US threatening to cut intelligence, weapons to pressure Ukraine into new peace deal, Reuters reports
Washington is pushing Kyiv to approve the framework of the deal by Nov. 27, coinciding with the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday, one of the sources told Reuters.
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mikepole.bsky.social @mikepole.bsky.social · 17/11/2025
www.mikepole.com/2025/11/17/u...
mikepole.com
Ukraine: War and Wonders – Ukraine’s Womanly Face of War
Svetlana Alexievich’s book ‘The Unwomanly Face of War’ is one of the most impactful I’ve ever read. The book is a series of interviews with surviving women who fought in the Soviet Red Army during …
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mikepole.bsky.social @mikepole.bsky.social · 10/11/2025
www.mikepole.com/2025/11/10/t...
mikepole.com
The Jurassic fossil soils of Curio Bay, and Fortrose-Otara, New Zealand
Soils “lie at the interface between earth, air, water, and life” (Needelman, 2013). They are constantly evolving in response to what is around them – such as the climate. For this reason, some scie…
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Reposted by @mikepole.bsky.social
Ko Ess Ahau ☀️😷 @occasio.bsky.social · 02/11/2025
“When you cut nearly 400 jobs in MPI, it's going to make a big, big impact, & the Luxon Govt needs to just admit that it was wrong, step up & fund them properly, & just throw everything at it that they can to eliminate these hornets, before next summer." #nzpol
rnz.co.nz
Conservationist Brad Windust slams Biosecurity NZ over hornet response
Former Far North beekeeper and pest trapper Brad Windust is sounding the alarm over a lack of urgency shown by authorities over eradicating the pest.
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mikepole.bsky.social @mikepole.bsky.social · 31/10/2025
“Investors should run from any company that would employ these tactics to smear completely reasonable critics”
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Andy McKay @korimakoecology.bsky.social · 23/10/2025
Mark Mitchell wants to cut down all the trees around powerlines. How about we force lines companies to invest in undergrounding critical infrastructure like they should have been doing for the last 30 years. We need more trees for biodiversity, wind breaks & reducing urban heat islands, not less.
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Reposted by @mikepole.bsky.social
Paul Le Comte 🇳🇿🇨🇦📷 @paullecomtephoto.nz · 20/10/2025
Possibly the most epic sunset I've ever captured. A mothership lenticular cloud above the Māniatoto plains looking at Pātearoa Rock & Pillar Range, Central Otago New Zealand #Nikon #GreatNZRoadie #Weather #NZ paullecomtephoto.nz (available on my site)
A monumentally large swirling lenticular cloud glowing most of the colours of the rainbow from the setting sun in the west. Stinking hot late summer evening that was about to crap itself.  High country grass plains with a range of mountains in the background
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Andy McKay @korimakoecology.bsky.social · 16/10/2025
"A single devastating ferret attack has left a flagship Waikato conservation project reeling after it wiped out half a vital seabird colony in a bloody rampage." 🌏 www.thepress.co.nz/nz-news/360853922/lone-survivor-dragged-away-killing-rampage
One ōi/grey-faced petrel chick survived the attack, left alone in a burrow with its dead parent.
Karioi Project
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Arfur Towcrate @arfurztowcrate.bsky.social · 11/10/2025
Thatcher said "The trouble with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money." The trouble with capitalism is that if you run out of other people's money, you can do it again with a new limited company
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mikepole.bsky.social @mikepole.bsky.social · 11/10/2025
www.afr.com/world/asia/h...
afr.com
Hotel Mongolia: You can check out of jail, but can’t leave the country
Mo Munshi’s story is a cautionary tale for Australian executives plying their trades in far-flung regions of the world.
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mikepole.bsky.social @mikepole.bsky.social · 29/09/2025
www.mikepole.com/2025/09/29/t...
mikepole.com
The Last Tree in Papanui Bush. And that last palm tree on Easter Island
“What did the kiwi bloke say while cutting down the last tree in Papanui Bush?” Here, I’m just re-phrasing of the question Jared Diamond wrote in his 2005 book ‘Collapse’. The original question Dia…
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Reposted by @mikepole.bsky.social
Nic Rawlence @nicrawlencenz.bsky.social · 29/07/2025
www.stuff.co.nz/travel/36077...
stuff.co.nz
Finding a home for Aotearoa’s ‘most significant archaeological find ever’
The part of the ocean-going waka was more than 700 years old and was, believed to be one of two hulls.
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Reposted by @mikepole.bsky.social
Emmanuelle Chaze @emmanuellechaze.com · 22/07/2025
Local news report that Timur, the boy killed today, had lost his dad two years ago. His mum was raising him alone, in Kyiv, and they had come to Kramatorsk to visit his grandmother, who was also injured in the attack.
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mikepole.bsky.social @mikepole.bsky.social · 27/06/2025
Last night I met the first kiwi in my time in Ukraine - the journalist Tom Mutch (@tomthescribe). He’s just, in the past week, published what may be the first comprehensive history of the war: The Dogs of Mariupol. amazon.com/Dogs-Mariupol-…
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mikepole.bsky.social @mikepole.bsky.social · 25/06/2025
Yesterday I got back to Lviv, after a nearly 16 hour train trip from Kharkiv. I’ve been volunteering in Ukraine for around 218 days now. Mostly in Lviv through the winter, then a month in Odesa (a sheet of black ice when I got there), and a few side trips. Staying a while yet…
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mikepole.bsky.social @mikepole.bsky.social · 18/06/2025
Submission completed opposing the Regulatory Standards Bill.
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mikepole.bsky.social @mikepole.bsky.social · 25/05/2025
Santander, Spain
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mikepole.bsky.social @mikepole.bsky.social · 22/05/2025
www.mikepole.com/2025/05/21/t...
mikepole.com
The Hollow Tree Stumps at Curio Bay
A hollow tree stump at the Jurassic fossil forest of Curio Bay, New Zealand. The inside of the stump (the wood is yellow, and has come black, ‘coally’ material inside) has been filled w…
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mikepole.bsky.social @mikepole.bsky.social · 08/05/2025
www.change.org/p/help-bring...
change.org
Sign the Petition
Help Bring Our Father Home- His Life Depends On It!
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mikepole.bsky.social @mikepole.bsky.social · 08/05/2025
x.com/AlisonBattis...
x.com
Alison Battisson on X: "Mo Munshi is stuck in Mongolia due to a travel ban. His health is deteriorating - he will die unless the ban is lifted & he can come home. I represent Mo & can attest to the urgent need to bring him home. https://t.co/ONS1RCXqjl" / X
Mo Munshi is stuck in Mongolia due to a travel ban. His health is deteriorating - he will die unless the ban is lifted & he can come home. I represent Mo & can attest to the urgent need to bring him home. https://t.co/ONS1RCXqjl
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mikepole.bsky.social @mikepole.bsky.social · 19/04/2025
www.mikepole.com/2025/04/19/g...
mikepole.com
Geography and the Bronze Age Battle at Tollense, Germany
One of the beauties of modern archaeological technique is the ability to analyse ancient battle, or massacre sites, in a forensic way. This has happened at the famous Teutoberg Forest site in north…
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mikepole.bsky.social @mikepole.bsky.social · 05/04/2025
“One man's plight in Mongolia is having a "chilling effect" on foreign capital inflow, according to his advocates … in stark contrast to the warm and welcoming message the young and emerging democracy is trying to send to international investors” www.mongolianbusinessdatabase.com/base/newsdet...
mongolianbusinessdatabase.com
News
Bridge of your product and service in/to/from Mongolia Mongolian Business Database
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mikepole.bsky.social @mikepole.bsky.social · 30/03/2025
"Clinically serious outcomes evaluated include scrumpox, mortification, the shakes, witchpox.., monkey fluxpox, dropsy of the brain ..crotch rot, .. grocer’s itch, .., the horrors..milk leg... the shakes, softening of the brain, .., swamp sickness..wandering womb fever, jail fever ....and autism. "
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mikepole.bsky.social @mikepole.bsky.social · 24/03/2025
A decade trapped in Mongolia' (from 'The Australian'). Former British MP and chair of the Mongolian-British Chamber of Commerce John Grogan: “I have visited [Mongolia] 51 times ... the Mo Munshi case is having a chilling effect on investment and trade” #bringmomunshihome
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Mike Dickison @adzebill.bsky.social · 21/03/2025
As part of the Banks Peninsula project I'm working this month on forest remnants and reserves, the last remaining 2% of the Peninsula's forest cover. Just wrote an article about a little one in Kaituna Valley, surviving by luck and the foresight of one family. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaituna...
A forest remnant on a farmed river floodplain, from high on a hill.
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mikepole.bsky.social @mikepole.bsky.social · 10/03/2025
www.mikepole.com/2025/03/10/w...
mikepole.com
Was there a Forest before Central Otago’s Kowhai Forest?
When humans arrived in New Zealand, a bit over 700 years ago (Wilmshurst et al., 2008; Jacomb et al., 2014), it seems some of the driest parts of the country, in Central Otago, were under low fores…
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mikepole.bsky.social @mikepole.bsky.social · 09/03/2025
www.mikepole.com/2025/03/09/d...
mikepole.com
Dunedin’s Saddlebacks/Tieke and Yellowheads/Mopua
Amateur field observations of species can be priceless. A local Dunedin man (Peter Thomson, 1823-1879), using the pen-name ‘Pakeha’, wrote several accounts of his ‘rambles’ around the area between …
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mikepole.bsky.social @mikepole.bsky.social · 07/03/2025
www.mikepole.com/2025/03/07/g...
mikepole.com
Green Island Bush – Divide and Conquer
Green Island Bush is a prime example of a large patch of New Zealand indigenous forest that was essentially annihilated in the late nineteenth century. It lay between today’s Green Island suburb, o…
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Reposted by @mikepole.bsky.social
George Monbiot @georgemonbiot.bsky.social · 07/03/2025
This guy, @albertburneko.bsky.social, is a genius. Please read his brilliant article on Elon Musk's deranged and morally repugnant Mars colonisation schtick. defector.com/neither-elon...
defector.com
Neither Elon Musk Nor Anybody Else Will Ever Colonize Mars | Defector
Mars does not have a magnetosphere. Any discussion of humans ever settling the red planet can stop right there, but of course it never does. Do you have a low-cost plan for, uh, creating a gigantic ac...
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mikepole.bsky.social @mikepole.bsky.social · 06/03/2025
www.mikepole.com/2025/03/06/t...
mikepole.com
The Lost Ecosystem of the Leith Swamp Forest, Dunedin
One part of Dunedin is different from the rest…. The Dunedin area is an old volcano. It’s formed mostly from the molten, or semi-molten material that forced its way up from below, or some of …
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Rosie de Difficult Kat 🌱🍉🍉 @rosiedekat.bsky.social · 05/03/2025
www.abc.net.au/news/2025-03...
abc.net.au
Facebook blocked Cyclone Alfred searches ahead of landfall and hasn't explained why
Despite hundreds of thousands of accounts talking about Cyclone Alfred on Facebook, social media giant Meta was blocking or hiding search results about the impending storm before being contacted by AB...
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mikepole.bsky.social @mikepole.bsky.social · 04/03/2025
www.mikepole.com/2025/03/04/t...
mikepole.com
Ten Years Trapped in Mongolia – Time to get Mo Munshi home to Australia
In 2007, I started work in Mongolia as a geologist with the company, Gobi Coal and Energy Limited. The Chairman was Mohammed ‘Mo’ Munshi – a citizen of Australia and the United Kingdom and No…
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mikepole.bsky.social @mikepole.bsky.social · 27/02/2025
www.mikepole.com/2025/02/27/t...
mikepole.com
The Ancient Footpath from Otepoti-Dunedin to Moeraki
How old is the oldest cultural feature on Aotearoa-New Zealand? Imagine being around when the only way to get anywhere was to walk or take a waka (canoe). That was New Zealand in pre-European times…
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