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You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.

Hey, shortwavers, Emily Kwong here with producer Hannah-Chin.

And for this month's nature quest, we are digging into a question from Molly McGid,

an Alttai or Christchurch, New Zealand.

This community has a pretty unique history.

So the Otakuro-Avon River Corridor is what I think

the official name is. It is also called the Red Zone, or at least that was the name that a lot of

people adopted after the earthquakes. So Molly's talking about the series of earthquakes that hit Christchurch over a decade ago.

They left a lot of the land near where she lives, unstable.

And to prevent death and destruction from any future earthquakes in that area,

the New Zealand government offered to buy people out of their homes

and designated certain areas as residential red zones.

Interesting.

And did people take the government up on this on moving out?

Yeah, so about 16,000 people in Christchurch, over 95%, accepted the government's offer.

And Molly told us now those red zones are home to things like community gardens and walking paths.

There should be plots of land where houses are, but there's nothing there.

She wanted to know more about this process, managed retreat, and whether it's a reasonable

strategy for dealing with climate change disaster in other parts of the world.

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