New Zealand Facts: Capital-Wellington
Largest City: Auckland
Population: 4,151,600
Land: 103,738 Sq. Miles
 

New Zealand is a country in the southwestern Pacific comprising two large islands, the north island and the south islands and numerous smaller islands. New Zealand is one of the most recently settled major land masses. Polynesia settlers arrived in their waka. Because of its long isolation from the rest of the world and its island geography, New Zealand has extraordinary flora and fauna. About 80% of the New Zealand flora occurs only in New Zealand. The two main types of forest are those dominated by podocarps including the giant kauri, and in cooler climates the southern beech. The remaining vegetation types in New Zealand are grasslands of tussock and other grasses, usually in sub-alpine areas, and the low shrub lands between grasslands and forests.