Three mountain climbers from the U.S. and Canada missing on New Zealand’s highest peak A tourist takes a photo at the foot of New Zealand’s highest peak, Aoraki, in 2020.

But colonizers of New Zealand in the 18th and 19th centuries took first the name of Taranaki and then the mountain itself. In 1770, the British explorer Captain James Cook spotted the peak from ...

New Zealand was the first country in the world to recognize natural features as people when a law passed in 2014 granted personhood to Te Urewera, a vast native forest on the North Island.

Close up of a Weta, New Zealand© Ryan Ranby/Shutterstock.com The mountain ranges of New Zealand are harsh habitats. ©Filip Fuxa/Shutterstock.com© Filip Fuxa/Shutterstock.com ...

Three mountain climbers — two from the U.S. and one from Canada — missing for five days on Aoraki, New Zealand's tallest peak, are believed to have died in a fall, the authorities said Friday.

The recognition acknowledges the mountain's theft from the Māori after New Zealand was colonized. It fulfills an agreement from the country's government to Indigenous people.