GP and passionate conservationist

Daphne arrived in New Zealand with her family in 1965 and simultaneously fell in love with the country and her future husband, Graeme. They shared many treasured conservation experiences here including finding female kakapo on Stewart Island with friends and taking them to grow up on Little Barrier Island.

"We helped with the first feeding supplement programme and fed both Wendy and Snark who are mainstays of the programme now.

Many common species that carpeted the forest floor in my trampling days of the ‘70s are now almost extinct, and our most spectacular native flower, the mistletoe, has been very rarely seen. But this summer I've been privileged to see it flowering in incredible profusion following an aerial 1080 programme in the Blue Mountains.

I've practiced medicine as a GP full time for 33 years. In four years’ time I plan to retire to Stewart Island to concentrate on the smaller picture and the creatures with whom I share my world.

Our country is an aviary and, unbelievably, we've brought in mammalian predators. At the present time aerial 1080 combined with ground control is our only effective tool, and we must urgently continue with it to save our forests from inevitable death.”