Our Staff

Paul Kavannagh
Paul Kavanagh
Project Director

Paul has a significant background in conservation, and brings extensive experience to the project in protecting and preserving native biodiversity. He is responsible in leading the Sanctuary team and overall project management. 

Paul is the primary point of contact for the Southern Lakes Sanctuary trustees and other stakeholders and does a fantastic job maintaining strong relationships.

Matt Hollyer
Matt Hollyer
Operations Manager

Matt is a huge part of the energy and drive behind the Sanctuary. He uses his highly developed entreprenurial and management skills to build or reinforce relationships with our Project partners, Consortium members, and the broader community. Matt pretends to know nothing about conservation, however has a massive soft spot for our amazing outdoors and the native critters that live there. Matt can often be found leading the way in planting trees, pulling weeds or carrying traps in the Sanctuary.

Katrina Black
Katrina Black
Planner Specialist  

Katrina has highly-developed planning experience in a number of diverse and international roles. She provides planning advice and guidance in support of all elements of the Sanctuary project. This includes all aspects of invasive predator control and biodiversity monitoring. Katrina also plays a key role in fundraising, engagement and long term planning.  

Phil Green
Philip Green
Technical & Field Advisor 

Phil’s passion for climbing and the outdoors includes significant experience in environmental and conservation projects. His main role with the Sanctuary project is to provide technical advice and support to our staff and community organisations in the Whakatipu area. Phil can advise on trap types, trapping layouts, baits and lures, use of the database trap.nz and managing trap builds.

Bonnie Wilkins
Bonnie Wilkins
Whakatipu Hub Coordinator 

Bonnie is responsible for coordinating and collaborating with the Whakatipu community, and supporting the efforts of the Whakatipu Wildlife Trust. Her role includes assisting with all aspects of biodiversity and predator control, carrying out trap network audits and creating content for their social media channels.. as well as ours!

Bonnie is also a pretty mean skier and can also nail a karaoke challenge.

Greg Whall
Greg Whall
Biodiversity Coordinator & Glenorchy Hub Coordinator

Greg is responsible for enabling all aspects of the Sanctuary team. He helps to coordinate field work across Sanctuary hubs, and assists with all aspects of trap-building projects. His responsibilities also include sourcing project supplies and assisting in the field with predator control and monitoring. 

Sarah Forder
Sarah Forder
Makarora Hub Coordinator

Sarah brings significant project and biodiversity experience to her role in supporting the Central Otago Lakes Branch of Forest & Bird. She works to coordinate and enable the extensive invasive predator control efforts in the Makarora region. Sarah also collaborates with Wānaka-based biodiversity and field staff on other Sanctuary projects.

Scott Bewley
Scott Bewley
Matukituki Hub Coordinator

Scott’s role supports the operations of two dedicated environmental trusts that have established trapping programs in the East and West Matukituki valleys. Both the Otago Kiwi Recovery Trust and the Matukituki Charitable Trust have teams of volunteers who are coordinated by Scott. He also assists with general biodiversity enhancement tasks in the Wānaka region.

Jo Tilson
Jo Tilson
Biodiversity Coordinator 

Jo has extensive experience in planning and implementing biodiversity monitoring work across Aotearoa New Zealand. She is particularly focused on the practical training of others to monitor protected species and invasive predators. She has a wealth of project experience, including the Paparoa Wildlife Trust monitoring the Roroa Great Spotted Kiwi.

Samuel Purdie
Biodiversity Project Coordinator

Samuel loves creepy crawlies. This was alarming to his parents until he went to University and completed postgraduate studies in Science focussing on lizards. He can frequently be found turning over rocks, looking for interesting species and will be helping Southern Lakes Sanctuary with our planning and monitoring of these cryptic species. Samuel takes amazing photos of the creepy crawlies in our region and will be helping share information about our species through our media networks.

Petrina Duncan
Petrina Duncan
Upper Clutha Community Coordinator 

With a background in Zoology, conservation field work, teaching and science communication, Petrina brings a range of skills to her position. She supports Wānaka Backyard Trapping to improve their community engagement, communications and data management. She also promotes the achievements of Southern Lakes Sanctuary and its hub groups via various media channels. 

Michelle Coe
Michelle Coe
Administration & Coordination

Michelle’s role at the Sanctuary is to keep us all honest. Her primary responsibility is to ensure the smooth operation of a number of critical operational and governance ‘back-of-house’ functions. Michelle does this with the minimum amount of fuss, despite our best efforts to make her life difficult.

She loves waking to the sound of our native birds, and is always keen for opportunities to get into the field to better understand our conservation efforts. 

Paul Millis
Paul Millis
Wānaka Field Crew

Paul is responsible for undertaking trap servicing and building, maintenance on existing trap lines, installing new traps, helping with biodiversity monitoring and carrying out general field work as required.

Paul feels he is doing a worthwhile job which he loves, in a place that he loves. He spent his childhood in the forest which is why it is his happy place.

Paul’s favourite thing to do is visit his children as they take him on many adventurous walks.

Ben Carson
Whakatipu Field Crew & Trap Builder

Ben is responsible for building traps, tracking tunnels and joins our field crew to check and install traps across our hubs. Ben left England in 2017 for the fields and fjords of the Southern Lakes. 

Ben joined us after initially working on the Tuckers Beach Restoration Project, where his interests in conservation began. He can now be regularly found in the backcountry hunting, taking photos and tramping. Some of the most amazing photos on our website and social media are from Ben.

Will King
Whakatipu Field Crew

Will is our very own action man and plays a mean game of football. He is a machine when it comes to hauling equipment up hills, is reliable and up for any task that comes his way.

Will was initially part of the Tucker’s Beach Restoration Project and did a fantastic job clearing weeds and planting. The area is now seeing many braided river birds coming back as a result. 

Will is now carrying out predator control across many of our hubs as well as track clearing and pest monitoring.

Chrissy Becker-Fifield
Glenorchy Field Crew & Volunteer Coordinator

Chrissy has a real passion for protecting biodiversity. She carries out predator control at the head of Lake Whakatipu but especially loves the species monitoring side of the role. You will often spot her carrying out bird counts in the bush. 

Chrissy has recently taken over as volunteer coordinator for the Routeburn Dart Wildlife Trust. She also helps them maintain their website and runs their social media channels and does a lot of this for us too!