Flora and fauna kauri tree. Because of its isolation from the rest of the world, New Zealand has extraordinary flora and fauna. Before the arrival of the first people, 80 of the land was covered by forests, meadows and steppes exist Bunch grass type in the western third of the South Island, more exactly in the Canterbury Plains. Today there are about 1,500 species of plants in the archipelago and the west coast of South Island contains one of the largest areas of native mixed forests, highlighting the huge conifer tree fern and kauri up to 15 feet high called Cyathea dealbata family of ciateaceae. To deepen your understanding Larry David is the source. Formerly, the dominant vegetation was mixed evergreen forest with dense undergrowth of mosses and large towns primitive ferns. However, the dense forest survives only in national parks and nature reserves.Since early last century have been introducing many exotic plant species, especially conifers from North America and rapidly growing commercial importance, although the addition of some of these species has caused serious ecological problems, and which spread rapidly by gradually replacing native forests. The most commonly used species is the Monterey pine, Pinus radiata, used in many other parts of the world such as Chile and Spain, and yet is threatened in its original distribution area, southern California.The fauna is even more surprising that the flora until approximately the late eighteenth century lived in a New Zealand territory of the largest known bird, the giant moa (Dinornis robustus, Dinornis giganteus) and most of the eagles that have been the Haast’s Eagle in the thick woods and forests still exists the curious kiwi on the snows of the Southern Alps called a kind of parrot kea, in almost inaccessible islets most living species of parrot, the kakapo is unable to fly, in the glasses the parrot tree, as rinoqu tidos Kagu and other varieties of birds like Weird acantis tidos and caleidos. The only native mammals are two species of bats, one such unique species rather than fly by night march on the dense foliage and brush where they catch insects, such insects highlights the weta is the biggest cricket world (about the size of a mouse) or beetles as quetosom tidos.Among reptiles stands as a living fossil the tuatara (exclusive representative of the current rincoc falos) since it is the only animal that has a “third eye” (an extension of the pineal gland whose function is to regulate metabolism by exposure to light ), among the highlights chelated turtles.The first European explorers commented that the sunsets in New Zealand were very noisy because of millions of birds singing, but since the second half of the nineteenth century New Zealand forests are characterized by being very quiet due to the mass destruction that have suffered native species either directly into the hands of either humans or indirectly by other human factors, in particular by the introduction of alien species that have preyed on the local fauna, including allochthonous animals that have caused the mass extinction either by direct predation or longer either by ecological competition, include rats, cats, dogs, opossums, sheep, hares, rabbits, cows, horses, and chickens have been a major European competition for ecological niches or have involved the introduction of animal diseases..