Kylie brings deep expertise and boundless passion to our team. A qualified veterinary nurse with experience in wildlife and zoo hospitals, she founded Raglan Native Rehabilitation to rescue taonga bird species. Waikato-born and based in Waitetuna for 20 years, she merges hands-on care with conservation, giving every bird a fighting chance.
Kate is currently doing a Masters focused on forest restoration, and works as the restoration manager at the OPERA (Otago Peninsula Eco Restoration Alliance). In her spare time, she loves being outdoors and tramping. Love for creation and a relationship with the Creator are inextricable to Kate, and she finds hope in how the kingdom of God means restoring our relationship with the land. She’s looking forward to sharing the goodness of that restoration through the mahi of A Rocha’s Dunedin Local Group.
After several years volunteering with the A Rocha local group in Dunedin, Zac stepped up to help lead the local group. Zac is currently working as a pastoral apprentice at Dunedin City Baptist Church while completing theological studies at Otago University. Before entering ministry, he worked for the City Sanctuary project leading urban predator control efforts around Dunedin. He feels really passionate about helping Christians see creation care as an important part of living faithfully for Christ.
Cynthia Karikala is a Community Development Practitioner, with a passion to change the systems keeping people disadvantaged. She currently works as a Community Innovation Specialist at Auckland Council, where she has been for 7 years. She has a degree in Conservation Ecology and Biosecurity at the University of Auckland, with a BSc (Hons) looking at the ecophysiology of Kauri forest species. Cynthia has a keen interest in connecting people to place/nature. She is inspired by what indigenous wisdom can teach us about our worlds current pressing issues. Cynthia was born in Hyderabad, India, but now called West Auckland, New Zealand her home. She is an avid traveller, liking to take the road less travelled to experience how different people live, her most recent trip involving volunteering at A Rocha India. She loves to hike and visit the world’s biodiversity hotspots, as the complexities of a healthy functioning ecosystem is where she sees God the clearest.
Di lives in Ōtautahi Christchurch with her husband, Mark, and two children. She is a qualified outdoor educator and early childhood education teacher. She has worked as an outdoor instructor, forest school kaiako, community preschool teacher and written educational resources. Di is passionate about connecting tamariki and rangatahi with God’s creation and loves seeing both people and whenua increasingly restored through this relationship. She has also been involved in coordinating her church’s Eco Church journey for a number of years and has seen the connections grow and strengthen in their community through intentional action.
John is on the committee of the A Rocha local group in Auckland. A retired secondary school teacher, John Staniland has been closely involved with Forest & Bird for more than 50 years and was the first chairman of its Waitākere Branch. He is an inaugural trustee of Matuku Link. He is a founder and honorary ranger of the Society’s 120-hectare Matuku Reserve, which is adjacent to Matuku Link. He organised the purchase of several blocks of forest to bring the Forest & Bird reserve to its present size and has been looking after it ever since the first block was bought in 1979.
