NEW ZEALAND: POPULATION 695 BILLION*

Meet New Zealand’s 695 billion* residents

Although people have definitely left their mark, New Zealand’s 5.33 million human residents make up a tiny fraction of the 695 billion*.

*ish. Most of New Zealand’s residents aren’t very good at filling out forms.

In percentage terms, humans come right at the bottom of the list – after plants, annelids (earthworms and wriggly things like them), molluscs (snails, slugs, shellfish and squids), mammals, freshwater fish, birds and reptiles. Thinking about it this way, humans make up less than 0.001% of New Zealand’s population. Maybe it’s time to start thinking about the other 99.999%.

New Zealand’s residents at a glance (PDF, 338K)

HOW WE DID IT

Counting every living thing with certainty is an impossible task – so we went for a good old-fashioned guesstimate instead. Here’s how we approached our back-of-the-envelope calculation.

WHAT WE DIDN'T COUNT

We didn’t estimate the number of insects, spiders, microbes, seaweeds, fungi or crustaceans.

Not only are New Zealand’s smallest and slimiest residents hard to put a number on, but if we included them, the number would get way too big to fit on a billboard or even say out loud.

So, we’ve chosen to keep our estimate within the realm of human comprehension.

GEOGRAPHICAL SCOPE

We covered land, sea and air in the estimate. We also included freshwater rivers, lakes and wetlands across New Zealand.

We estimated the number of marine animals within waters 12 nautical miles (22.2 km) of the coast of the North and South Islands – the major part of New Zealand’s territorial sea, as defined by international law.

DATA SOURCES

Estimates for biological groups like plants and annelids were based on estimates of area x population density.

Estimates for birds, fish, reptiles and mammals were based on species x abundance.

Data sources that helped:

• land cover and vegetation: New Zealand Land Cover Database (version 5)

• marine fish species and endemicity: fisheries stock status reports from the Ministry of Primary Industries, mean weight estimates from Fisheries New Zealand, Earth Sciences New Zealand Stock Assessments and Surveys

• freshwater fish data: Earth Science New Zealand NZ Freshwater Fish Database, Earth Sciences New Zealand and DOC Electro-fishing and Spotlighting Surveys

• bird numbers and endemism: NZ Garden Bird Survey, DOC 5-minute Bird Counts

• mammal and reptile population data: Department of Conservation and Stats NZ

• territorial sea boundary: Territorial Sea and Exclusive Economic Zone Act.