Wild Horses of the Last Land
Wild Horses of the Last Land
Learning about ourselves and nature from the Kaimanawa wild horses
In the mid-1990s Wayne Linklater landed a job researching the bands of wild horses that lived in New Zealand’s largest military training grounds near Waiouru. For the next four years he observed foals born, the love between stallions, mares and their offspring, and also violence, loyalty, betrayal and courage, all played out against an astounding landscape.
Linklater started out believing in the objectivity of conservation science and that free-roaming horses were a harmful, invasive species. But those four years taught him differently.
Clear-eyed and backed by deep science, this moving book is about the fascinating history and lives of wild horses, about the bonds between horses and humans, and about becoming a different sort of conservationist. This is nature writing of a very high order.
Wayne Linklater began his career as a freshwater ecologist before turning to wildlife biology, a path that has taken him across Africa, Australasia, North America and Southeast Asia. Over 30 years he has studied creatures as varied as caddisflies, voles, rhinoceroses and elephants as well as wild horses — experiences that have shaped both his science and his writing.
Formerly Associate Professor of Conservation Science and Director of the Centre for Biodiversity and Restoration Ecology at Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington, he is now Professor of Environmental Studies at California State University, Sacramento, and is a research associate in the Center for African Conservation Ecology at Nelson Mandela University, South Africa.
His work blends scientific rigour with a concern for biodiversity, drawing connections between animal ecology and behaviour, human values and conservation decisions. He writes and speaks on wildlife management, conservation and politics; environmental psychology, philosophy and ethics; and on the deeper question of how humans might reimagine and live with biodiversity.
Through his writing, Linklater continues to shape conversations in conservation, connecting science with lived experience and inviting diverse and compelling perspectives to conservation debates.
- ISBN-13
- 9781991309396
- Publisher
- Massey University Press
- Imprint
- Massey University Press
- Publication date
- 8 October 2026
- Format
- Paperback
- Pages
- 368
- Dimensions
- 230 x 163 mm
- Language
- English