What percentage (or acrege) of New Zealand is jungle (if any)?

Hi,
NZ has some rain forests, but I think it lies to far south of the
tropics or semitropics to have jungle in the usual understanding of
the word.
Myoarin

That's what I figured. I am just trying to win a bet with
someone...that's what professors do with all of our free time in the
summer :)

Is THAT what they do?  I thought they finally immersed themselves in
the research that they couldn't do all winter.  But maybe you are ...
Knowing that money is on the line, I've tried to back up up my
personal impression.  Only found two sites with a search for    jungle
"new zealand"
that seemed to understand that I wanted to know about jungles in New Zealand.

This one is a private site about someone's cactus gardening, so I am
pretty confident that it is not about jungle in the usual sense.  But
the kiwilass would love to hear from you - or anyone - so you can ask
her.

http://www.angelfire.com/id/goldenkiwi/Epicacti.html

This site is from a German, but - with all respect for my neighbors -
he seems to think that any biotope more verdant than those in northern
Europe is a jungle.  The pic is of the rain forest on the South Island
(been there, seen that), delicious and spooky, but not "jungle", I
would claim.

Hope you win your bet!  Maybe next summer you can get down to
"Godzown" * and find out first hand.

Myoarin

* Godzown/Godzone  -  God's Own Country   
http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/God's-Own-Country

OK...it's time for me to reveal the secret of academia. We don't catch
up on research that we couldnt do all winter. Do you really think that
teaching 3 classes per semester and "maintaining" 8 hours in our
office takes up that much time? We actually spend our summers thinking
up ways to spend our massive book royalty checks and outlandish
speaking fees. I choose to gamble mine away on useless trivia and
spend the rest on overpriced road bikes and kayaks.

C'mon, you wouldn't admit that, even anonymously, if it were true.
And y'd have been to NZ long ago to cycle and paddle.  It could be, however, 
that you're from a N.European country where everyone is deathly afraid of 
tropical snakes and asked about the jungles just to be sure there aren't any.

The truth is that I am from Florida (USA) the land of vast swamps,
numerous snakes, and, of course, Disney World. And as for the free
time, maybe I did exagerate a bit. But let's face it, I'm not short on
sleep, I forgot what stress felt like, and I have ample time to train
for triathlons while still making trivial bets about New Zealand
foliage. Damn this 10-2 daily grind :)

Define what you mean by "Jungle".

If you mean tropical rain forest, then New Zealand doesn't have any,
not being in the tropics.

However, New Zealand does have sub-tropical or temperate rain forests.
New Zealanders often call it "the Bush". It can be cold, wet, full of
undergrowth and tall tree with hanging vines etc. In some respects
this sort of forest is jungle-like.

If you ever saw the film "The Piano" then that will give you a good
idea of the sort of rainforest New Zealand has. Also, some of the
forest scenes in the "Lord of the Rings" movies give you an idea too.

To quote Tourism New Zealand
(http://www.newzealand.com/travel/about-nz/key-facts/key-facts-natural-environment.cfm):
"The characteristic New Zealand forest is a temperate, evergreen rain
forest with giant tree ferns, vines and epiphytes - looking a bit like
the popular image of a jungle. "

To quote the Department of Conservation
(http://www.doc.govt.nz/Explore/001~National-Parks/index.asp): "more
than five million hectares ? a third of New Zealand ? [is] protected
in parks and reserves."

A lot of this DOC land is rainforest. There are also large tracts of
forestry land in eithe Crown, Native (Maori) title or private
ownership (including me owning about 700m2 of it).

I seem to recall a comment somewhere that about 80% of New Zealand was
covered by forest and I see the CIA world fact book says 87+% is
"Other" ("non-arable and non-permanent crops" but I think that cannot
be right as New Zealand considers "Plantation Forestry" to be
"farming" and I think about 10% of NZ land use is devoted to farm
forestry, from memory. See Statistics NZ for more facts
(http://www.stats.govt.nz/quick-facts/land-envmt/default.htm) and an
entiely different set of numbers.

In summary I think the answer is New Zealand has a lot of forest and
bush but no jungles.