Staff Profiles

Sue Maturin
Otago/Southland Field Officer

Deep sea diver, writer, rookie film-maker, sea-kayaker and roving international conservationist Sue Maturin started life on a remote sheep and beef farm on Banks Peninsula surrounded by animals. And while picking up a degree in physical geography and sociology, and later a masters in resource management, she has managed to meet a fair chunk of the world’s creatures on land and in the sea. During her 25 years working in conservation, she has done a slew of jobs including work at the Commission for the Environment, the Centre of Resource Management, Department of Lands and Survey and Fish and Game. Each policy job was punctuated by field work, allowing her to quickly replace her office space with remote exotic places such as  Indonesia’s native forests, the Galapagos Islands, the South Island’s braided rivers and Vanuatu’s tropical jungle. In 1991, she joined Forest & Bird and set up a satellite office in Dunedin. She works primarily on South Island high country issues, and every so often flits off to Vanuatu to rid the Vathe Conservation Area of big vine leaf with a troop of volunteers.

 

Debs Martin
Top of the South Field Officer

Debs Martin is what you’d call a natural activist. Born to an outspoken mother, who dreamt up campaigns like the ‘washing machine protest’ against the Springbok tour, Debs was inspired to follow her mum’s blazing lead. Since then, she’s been involved in countless all nighters, protests and letter-writing marathons speaking out against all manner of social justice (women’s rights, peace) and environmental (nuclear, anti-mining, GE-free NZ, deforestation) issues. After completing a degree in psychology and sociology, she worked as a drug and alcohol counsellor in Hanmer Springs. And it was while wandering the hills with clients that she was inspired to return to Canterbury University, eventually completing a masters degree in political geography. She then worked as an advisor for the Green’s Jeanette Fitzsimons and in 2004 she joined Forest & Bird – leaving behind her long-time Canterbury home to establish a new satellite office in Nelson. Now her attentions have focused largely on saving wild rivers, like the Mokihinui River, protecting the three national parks in her domain and saving some of the last homes of our endangered long-tailed bats. As well as being a seasoned activist, she is also a hard-core tramper, weed-buster, writer and a former raft guide & piano teacher.

 

Nick Beveridge
Northland/Auckland Field Officer

For the past few decades, Nick Beveridge has played a key role in bringing the wild things back into the city – initially as a landscape architect, and then as an open-space strategist at NZ’s first eco city in the Waitakeres. Since he joined Forest & Bird ten years ago, he has played a major role in re-foresting Auckland’s concrete jungle. During his youth he spent much of his time insecting - netting some of Christchurch’s most spectacular moths and butterflies, and later shifted his focus to their hosts by earning a degree in botany. Creating corridors for birds and insects allows him to tap into his vast knowledge of everything green, leafy and six-legged. During his time at Forest & Bird he has signed up over 60 pest-busting landowners to the Lucas Creek/Paremoremo Restoration project; designed several award-winning displays at Ellerslie Flower Show and helped raise the profile of various Auckland restoration projects.

Karen Baird
Sea-bird Conservation Advocate

If you sink into the deep, blue yonder you’ll meet lots of fascinating creatures – and if you’re lucky Karen Baird might be one of them. This well-travelled marine conservationist has dived in all types of waters around New Zealand, Fiji and the Solomon Islands – but her favourite dive spot is near the whale-filled trench around New Zeaand’s northern end - the Kermadec arc. She is currently working for Forest & Bird, with WWF and the Pew Environment Group, to gain greater protection for this area. Karen is the daughter of the audio-visual soundman for the Wildlife Service, John ‘birdman’ Kendrick, who singlehandedly brought New Zealand birdsong to our radio-waves. Kendrick fostered Karen’s thirst for adventure and love of nature, and after leaving school she went on to study zoology, graduating with a masters. Unleashed on the big wide world, Karen has since travelled far and wide during her 25 years in conservation, with stints in Chile, Enderby island, Raoul island, Fiji, New Caledonia, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Sri Lanka and Queensland. Over the years she’s been involved in a number of projects involving little spotted kiwi, New Zealand sea lions, southern right whales, royal albatrosses and our critically endangered fairy tern. As well as being an intrepid explorer and a wildlife tour guide, she’s an expert in storm petrels, an area of expertise she shares with her husband Chris Gaskin. She’s also a hiker, a sea kayaker, photographer and a budding apiarist.

Chris Todd
South Island Conservation Manager

After a ‘free-range’ childhood and a teenagehood spent tramping the South island’s many mountains, Chris studied resource management /national park management at Lincoln – an area that lay close to his heart. Since then, he has gained 30 years' experience in environmental management and worked with communities in New Zealand, Australia, Nepal, the Philippines and Bangladesh. Chris had a 12-year stopover in Australia, where he began work pouring concrete and building roofs and ended as a lecturer in resource management in the Northern Territory. Chris’s masters thesis was on the co-management of national parks between Aboriginal groups and conservation agencies in the Northern Territory. He returned to New Zealand in the late 1990s and lived for 6 years in the tiny rural community of Waikari, where he ran his environmental consultancy and brought up his young family with his wife Ruth. He soon became embroiled in water politics, which is what brought him to Forest & Bird in 2003. Since then, water management has remained a key part of his work, along with overseeing the work of the South Island team. As well as managing four staff members, Chris is a father of three young adults, a mountaineer, a music maker, a Mandarin speaker, a lunatic river swimmer and the manager of a prodigious vegetable garden. He also chairs a charitable trust that helps at-risk people gain work in organic gardens and environmental projects, and is the director of a charitable company employing 35 staff that carries out large-scale ecological restoration projects throughout Canterbury. 

Nic Vallance
Conservation Advocate

As a young child growing up in the Mackenzie Country, Nic’s pets were typically multi-legged and gawky: namely, praying mantises, caterpillars and cockabullies. As her menagerie swelled in size, she grew curiouser and curiouser and finally enrolled herself in a zoology degree to help answer the multitude of questions knocking around in her head. As part of her honours degree, she got to romp around our Antarctic oceans studying adelie penguins, and later went on to research bottlenose dolphins in Fiordland. She then switched her attentions to our endangered Hector’s dolphin as a swimming-with-dolphins guide. In 2001 she hung up her togs, picked up a camera and signed herself up for a postgraduate diploma in natural history filmmaking and communication.  These skills came in very handy as a Department of Conservation public awareness media officer in Otago, and later as media manager at head office. During this time, she presented over 200 mini-documentaries for Meet the Locals, securing her position as New Zealand’s one and only Attenboroughette. Concerned about the government’s plans to mine national parks, Nic moved to Forest & Bird in 2010 to become a voice for nature. Since then, she has slowly grown hoarse speaking up for the little creatures and places she holds dear. Her curiosity in these beasties still runs strong and as an aspiring apiarist, gecko breeder, chicken rescuer (she has 3 ex-battery hens) her menagerie is still a-growing.

Mark Bellingham
North Island Conservation Manager

After completing a seemingly never-ending degree in ecology, geology, archaeology and geography, Mark lifted himself out of the poverty trap by becoming a high school teacher in rural Northland. Since then he has completed a PhD in planning, worked as an ecologist for the Wildlife Service, lectured in environmental planning and dabbled in regional politics. Mark has lived throughout New Zealand, including the Chatham Islands. During his career, he has helped to establish the Maui’s marine sanctuary, successfully lobbied for the protection of the Firth of Thames as a RAMSAR site and secured ¾ million hectares of Crown land in the late 1980s. At work, he manages five full-time staff and a number of conservation projects from forest restoration to fairy tern recovery. At home, he cares for 10,000 bees, 10 sheep, six chickens, two teenagers and a flourishing family of tadpoles that live in his natural swimming pool

Kevin Hackwell
Advocacy Manager

This dynamo of a man has been on the frontline of many of our major environmental and social battles over the past 35 years. He started his activist career at the tender age of 15 over the felling of the South Island’s beech forests, and after gaining an honours degree in ecology took the government to task over its ‘think big’ schemes. Over the years he has played an important role in protecting our remaining native forests from logging, in establishing our nuclear-free status, the Official Information Act, the MMP electoral system; and New Zealand’s Smoke-Free Environments Act . He’s been involved in countless actions, boards (Greenpeace, Tongariro Taupo Conservation Board, Wellington Council of Social Services, the Council for Socially Responsible Investment) and community groups, all the while working for a range of organisations from the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR), Peace Movement Aotearoa and the Downtown Community Ministry. Since 2003, he has been Forest & Bird’s Advocacy Manager, a role in which he helps to manage and plot the strategic direction of this diverse, growing organisation. During that time, his team has successfully fought the government’s plans to mine our national parks, gained greater protection for Maui’s and Hector’s dolphins and established five high-country parks in the South island. He is a tramper, a seasoned rat trapper and vegetable gardener.

Jenny Lynch
KCC Officer/Places for Penguins Co-ordinator

Jenny grew up on what is best described as a green dairy farm in the Taranaki. The 300-cow farm has a QEII covenant so all waterways were planted, all wetlands were nurtured, all surrounding forestland was stripped of pests and all fertiliser was used sparingly. Living in the foothills of Mt Taranaki gave Jenny access to prime creature-watching grounds, and it is here that she became a fully fledged bird nerd. Since leaving her position as bird-rescuer, bug-hunter and pet menagerie manager at the farm (read calves, lambs, dogs and guinea pigs), Jenny hit the books, earning herself a degree in ecology and biodiversity, and later a certificate in secondary school teaching. On leaving university, she worked as a quarantine officer, and after graduation from teacher’s college went on to teach a gaggle of teenagers science at high schools around Wellington. Since joining Forest & Bird, she has played a key role in helping to boost the flippered population of Wellington and nurture a whole new generation of nature nerds in the Kiwi Conservation Club (KCC) for kids. She is currently studying towards a masters in conservation biology. 

 

Maj DePoorter
Ark in the Park Manager, Auckland

Belgium-born zoologist, Maj DePoorter plays a big part in managing an ancient 2,000 hectare forest and the 100 volunteers and contractors who keep it pest-free and pristine. Her finely tuned management skills and fundraising prowess have helped the park grow 500 hectares and she hopes to push its boundaries right to the sea. In the past three years, three types of birds have returned to its branches: kokako, robins and whiteheads. Maj says she has three loves: Ark in the Park, the Antarctic and bunnies! She discovered the true depth of her first love – bunnies – after travelling to Canada’s icy plains to acquire a PhD in the population trends of snow shoe hares. Soon after that she fell head over heels for Antarctica as an anti-mining campaigner for Greenpeace. Now her loving attentions have fallen squarely on the Ark in the Park. These attentions will remain there for the foreseeable future, although she remains a faithful watchdog of her former love - the great white continent of Antarctica.

Al Fleming
North Island Field Officer

Al Fleming never had aspirations to be a marine mammal – it just turned out that way. He started his life frolicking in the mighty Waikato river, and then later swapped this body of water for the salty pool that covers three quarters of our planet. He has dived in Fiji, Australia, Japan and Northland’s sub-tropical marine reserve Poor Knights where he worked as a Dive Master for three seasons. During his career, he’s worked as a builder, a whale boner for the Ngati Wai Trust Board and a Marine Mammal Officer for DOC. On the way, he has picked up a various qualifications including a BA in Geography and a Marine Studies Certificate Diploma. After overseeing the Marine Mammal Tourism industry in Northland, Al changed positions at the Department of Conservation to become a Marine Reserves Advocacy Officer. He was involved in the establishment of the Whangarei Harbour marine reserve, policed the Poor Knights Islands Marine Reserve and supported the Experiencing Marine Reserves Programme. One marine protected area he’s still keen to establish is around Mimiwhangata, and this is one of his major projects at Forest & Bird. On top of this, he works to protect one of the largest tracts of forest in the North Island (Kaimai Mamaku) and supports a gaggle of volunteer on various weed-busting & pest-busting projects. During his downtime he likes to ogle fish, wander through the hills of the Coromandel and hang out with his growing brood.

Aalbert Rebergen
Lower North Island Field Officer

Dutchman Aalbert Rebergen is Forest & Bird’s fully fledged bird nerd. Newspapers from around the country are constantly sending him blurry pics of unidentified flying objects, or outlandish birds’ nests to get his expert opinion. After spending his youth with a pair of binoculars clamped to his face in pursuit of rare, shy or cryptically camouflaged birds, he set out to do what he does best: bird watching. During the past 30 years he’s picked up a degree in landscape planning and a post-graduate diploma in wildlife management and worked in a number of roles – as a bird surveyor, a red-billed gull researcher and a biodiversity officer. Perhaps his most curious job has been counting albatross from the comfort of his own home – a job he did casually over ten years with the help of historic slides, a projector, a large sheet of paper and a calculator. Since settling in New Zealand, he has worked for DOC as a conservation officer in the Wairarapa & Twizel and at the QEII Trust, which involved everything from fish & botanical surveys to private land restoration. Aalbert has been at Forest & Bird for three years, and when he’s not campaigning for underbirds in our Bird of the Year competition, he can be found working with landowners and city councillors in the lower North Island to improve our rivers, coast, birds & forest-life.

Andy Warneford
Field Staff, Ark in the Park

Andy Warneford’s primary role is as a refugee resettlement officer for all things feathery. Since joining the team at Forest & Bird in 2006 he helped to safely returned hihi, kokako and whitehead back into our 2000ha pest-controlled reserve in the Waitakere ranges – and has grand plans to fill it with all number of species from kiwi to kaka. The former electrical engineer became an accidental conservationist when a robin visited his property in the Waitakere ranges, and has never looked back. As a child he used to hear kiwi in the nearby forest and cultivated his skills as bird-nurser, however he never imagined himself as a hand-on-his-heart tree hugger. In his spare time, when he’s not monitoring the new arrivals, conducting surveys and preparing for new translocations, he can be found putting the finishing touches on his Masters in Conservation Biology.
 

Claire Browning
Conservation advocate 

A whimsical project to create a food forest in her garden and desire to see proper reporting of environmental issues gave ex-lawyer Claire the motive and material she needed to start moonlighting as an environmental blogger on Pundit. Reporting the eco-news one story at a time, and restoring the small environment outside her back door inspired her to want to tackle, every day, the real job that matters, as a Conservation Advocate for Forest & Bird. Her trifecta of skills in law reform and policy development, media and, of course, gardening makes her a different kind of advocate – one able to analyse environmental law and lobby on policy, whilst carrying out her other daily duties of tweeting, blogging and tree-hugging! Since joining Forest & Bird in August, the former Law Commission and Ministry of Justice staffer has been fighting the environmental battle at the top of the cliff, as it were; her job is to try to get the law and policy right, instead of defending the environment one extinction at a time. Out of the office, she might be found daydreaming on a rock at Pahaoa, or filling her Wairarapa garden with fruit (from russet apples to raspberries), flowers, chooks, and many vegetables. “Just everything delicious,” she says. And, “environmentalism is just global gardening in the end – isn’t it?”

Heidi Quinn
Volunteer Co-ordinator 

Since arriving on our shores, this sprightly, UK-born volunteer co-ordinator has been placed in charge of one of the largest and most precious organs of our organisation: our volunteer base. After completing her degree in environmental monitoring, she’s spent a number of years organizing a range of environmental programmes for pint sized eco-warriors to golden oldies in everything from bushcraft to dragonfly monitoring.  And in her spare time, she’s volunteered for all number of organizations - disability care, badger monitoring, animal surgery  - you name it, she’s done it. Working from our Wellington office, she provides communication networks, informative training, vision and strategic direction for our volunteer base which puts in a whooping 800,000 volunteer hours each year.  

Katrina Subedar
Marine Advocate

As a child, Katrina had unrivalled access to Northland’s watery playground and hobnobbed with a range of Whangarei-based aquanauts & biologists, so her desire to defend these watery climes ran strong from a young age. Indeed, at the tender age of 10, she’d already decided to become a marine biologist. In 2009, graduated with a masters degree in marine science after studying the homing ability of New Zealand triplefins, and went onto lecture at Northland Polytech. After joining Forest & Bird in August 2011, she’s been involved in several projects & initiatives including an iphone application for our best fish guide, a raft of marine reserves proposals and greater protection for marine mammals and fish. In her spare time, she enjoys heading out into our deep blue yonder – whether it be with an aqua-lung, a snorkel, a surf board or on a sailing boat.
 

To come: profiles on  Jennifer Miller & Anna Cameron