Queen's Honours and Conservation Awards

Forest and Bird, Issue 312, 1 May 2004, Page 45

Queen's Honours and Conservation Awards

A distinguished life member of Forest and Bird, Hon. Sandra Lee-Vercoe was made a Companion of the Queen’s Service Order for Public Services in the New Year Honours List. The award acknowledges her work in government, first in local government, then as a member of Parliament from 1993-2002. Sandra Lee-Vercoe was the first Maori woman elected to a general seat in Parliament (Auckland Central representing the Mana Motuhake Party), and was a Minister of the Crown from December 1999 to August 2002, when she was reponsible for local government and conservation. In the early ‘1990s she was a member of the Forest and Bird executive and was made a distinguished life member of the Society on her retirement from Parliament. She is now New Zealand High Commissioner to Niue. A long-serving chairman of Fish and Game New Zealand (1991-2000), David Lawrie of Pukekohe, was made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to conservation. His broad span of interests has included the chair of the Waikato

Conservation Board and the Auckland-Waikato Fish and Game Council. A founder of the Miranda Naturalists’ Trust he has been its chairman since 1999, when he was also appointed inaugral chairman of the National Wetland Trust. The Forest and Bird Council recognised his work with an Old Blue Award at its last annual general meeting.. Don Merton OBE has been further recognised for his pioneering work in devising methods for the breeding of rare and endangered bird species. Birdlife International, to which Forest and Bird is affiliated, recognised Don Merton with one of 12 Conservation Achievement Awards at its recent conference in Durban, South Africa. The citation recalls that as a senior technical officer with the Department of Conservation, Dr Merton has ’pioneered rat and cat eradication programmes on islands in the Pacific and Indian oceans’. Besides his work saving the Chatham Island black robin from extinction, and work with the DoC threatened species unit, he has helped several Birdlife Partners set up eradication programmes against invasive species.