This thesis aims to contribute to New Zealand’s environmental history by examining the New Zealand Native Bird Protection Society’s magazine Forest and Bird and its representations of animals in the 1930s. The current historiography of the society, known today as Forest and Bird, is relatively limited. This thesis aims to broaden the historiography by focusing specifically on how contributors used different techniques in their treatment of different animals. It responds to the invitation to join in the conversation of human and animal relations in New Zealand, put forward by Annie Potts in A New Zealand Book of Beasts: Animals in our Culture, History and Everyday Life. Separated into three chapters, the thesis analyses representations of New Zealand’s native birds, introduced or ‘pest’ species, and the role of humans. Chapter One identifies the use of exoticism to encourage protection of New Zealand’s wonderful, unique, and beautiful birds. Protection is further encouraged through the metaphors of friendship and citizenship. Chapter Two moves the conversation to introduced species, and argues that the Native Bird Protection Society and its contributing writers actively utilised language of disgust, destruction and the metaphor of the enemy to encourage action against these animals. Finally, Chapter Three examines the role humans had to play in this context, arguing that the same processes of categorising are evident in representations of humans of the past, present and future in Forest and Bird. The thesis demonstrates the categories used for depicting humans and animals are dependent upon context and often contradictory.