Our Team

Trustees

Field Team

Work opportunities

Trustees

Deb Baudrum

Trustee

Deb is a landowner in Rosalie Bay. She is a committed to suppressing rats and brings a practical and measured view to the Trust representing landowners.

John Ogden

Trustee

John is a retired Professor of Ecology. He has long been passionate about the Barrier and in 1990 he purchased a property at Awana on the eastern coast. He campaigns tirelessly for the protection of the Island’s ecology and provides the Trust with ecological advice and in depth analysis of data

Judy Gilbert

Trustee

Judy is the founding Trustee and voluntary manager of the Sanctuary. She has been a landowner at Windy Hill since 1972 and began pest management on a larger scale on the property in 1999. She is committed to a pest free Great Barrier Island.

Derek Bell

Trustee

Derek added his 137 HA QEII covenanted property to the Sanctuary in 2016. In 2018 he became a Trustee.

He is a committed conservationist and brings a strong planning and policy background to the Trust.

Field Team

Maxine Barrowman

Field Worker

February 2021 – Present

Dean Medland

Pig Management

October 2019 – Present

Jordan Scarlett

Field Team Manager

October 2023 – Present

Cory Hardstaff

Field Worker

June 2020 – Present

Working at the Windy Hill Sanctuary

The Sanctuary employs a professional field team five days a week to undertake all the tasks described in the annual Operational Plan. This involves checking all of the 6000+ stations located on 100+ kilometres of tracks in the 800 hectare Sanctuary area. This includes baiting and trapping kiore, ship rats, and mice. Trapping and despatch of feral cats and keeping data of all culls. The team also providing daily data on the location of feral pigs for the voluntary pig hunter. A field team member may cover 10-15 ks a day.

Monitoring is regularly carried out for chevron skinks, black petrel activity, lizard sightings, fungi, invertebrates, and freshwater species. Rat activity is monitored four times a year using rat tracking tunnels.

A typical day working at Windy Hill

The team works from 8.30am to 3.30pm every day with a typical day starting at the field base with the Field manager allocating routes for some of the 6000+ rat stations located at 25m spacing on the 100+ks of tracks in the Sanctuary. A safety briefing takes place before the team sets out and a check of all gear needed for the day undertaken.

Rat Traps are systematically cleared and rebaited and bait stations are replenished with data kept on the number of rats culled and the number of replacement baits put into stations. This takes place on beautiful days, or misty ones, or even in light rain. Cell phones with all the tracks and stations displayed assist the team with covering the ground.

On the way photos with GPS points logged may be taken of sightings of lizards, orchids in flower, a black petrel burrow, or stream in flood.

At the end of the day back at the field base old bait is debagged and composted, the data gathered is entered into the system, and everyone safely accounted for.

Other days may be spent on a cat trapping run, monitoring for rats, weeding, or clearing tracks.