• To volunteer for the first time, or to find out more about the next volunteer day, contact Karen.
• To volunteer from overseas, or if you wish to discuss conservation issues relating to the Ark, contact John.
• For general inquiries, including those from the media, or when Karen and John are not available, contact the Project Manager.
Karen grew up in central Auckland, but when she returned from university studies in Dunedin, her love of the Waitakere forest and the wild surf beaches drew her to live in West Auckland. She is proud to have now been a Westie for thirty years, working as a GP and raising three children. She was a Kiwi Conservation Club coordinator while her children were young, and now she has moved on to the organising of grown-ups!
email: karen@colgan.co.nz
Maj de Poorter comes to this project from the Invasive Species Specialist Group of IUCN's Species Survival Commission, based at the University of Auckland. For the last ten years she worked on advocacy, networking, awareness and education on invasive species at an international level. She is by training an ecologist, having done an undergraduate at the Free University of Brussels (Belgium), and a PhD on snowshoe hares in the Canadian Yukon territories. She is particularly pleased to be part of the Ark in the Park project and its community based approach.
email: arkinthepark@forestandbird.org.nz
phone: 64-9-302-3902
postal address: C/- Forest and Bird, PO Box 108055, Symonds St, Auckland 1150
Born and bred in West Auckland, John’s first memory of native wildlife was of a pigeon feeding on nikau berries at the Cascades. Fifty years on the nikau is bigger; so is John and his life long passion for wildlife became focused on conceiving and developing Ark in the Park. As a day job he’s a GP with other interests of family, bicycling and macadamia nut growing.
email: cjnk@xtra.co.nz
