About the Blue Penguin Trust

The world's smallest penguin

The West Coast Blue Penguin Trust is a charitable trust formed in 2006 by local residents concerned at the decline in blue penguin populations.

Its aim is to conserve the South Island West Coast blue penguins and their habitat. The Trust raises funds for further research on the penguins and works with the community to raise awareness through education and advocacy. Blue Penguins are a near threatened species in slow decline and need our protection from coastal development, predators, dogs and traffic.

Trustees

Kerry-Jayne Wilson – Trust Chairperson

Kerry-Jayne Wilson

Kerry-Jayne Wilson has devoted the last 40 years to researching penguins and other seabirds.
She has travelled the globe studying birdlife in places as diverse as New Zealand, Antarctica, Mongolia, Malaysia, Newfoundland, Indonesia and the Cook Islands. She has written two books, about 60 scientific papers, plus numerous reports and other articles.
In 2009 she retired after 23 years as a lecturer in ecology at Lincoln University. She now lives near Charleston on the West Coast where she works as a natural history writer and seabird ecologist.
Kerry-Jayne is the New Zealand representative for the Australasian Seabird Group, a past vice-president and council member of the Ornithological Society of New Zealand and compiles and edits the biennial State of New Zealand Birds Report.

Jill Cotton – Trustee

Jill Cotton

Jill Cotton was one of the founding trustees of the West Coast Blue Penguin Trust. She has loved nature since she was a school girl, bird-watching in the UK.
Jill came to New Zealand as a teenager, initially living in Christchurch. As part of her work with the QE2 Arts Council, and the Ministry of Internal Affairs, she came to the West Coast in the early 80’s, working on venture capital programmes assisting crafts people to set up co-operatives.
In the late 80’s, Jill opened one of the first B & B’s on the Coast Road, back then there was no accommodation available between Greymouth and Westport. Jill continues to live on the Coast Road and enjoys sharing the beach and dunes with blue penguins.

Paul Elwell-Sutton – Trustee

Paul Elwell-Sutton

Paul Elwell-Sutton was born in London, raised in Tanzania and Switzerland and educated mainly at the International School of Geneva. He has a BSc (hons) in Animal Physiology from Aberdeen University.
In the early 70s he hitch-hiked across Asia to Australia, and found himself in Coromandel in 1973. He has been a beekeeper, an organic baker, and currently works on a casual basis for DOC in Haast, mainly as a trapper, but also with the kiwi team.
Paul became involved with the Trust in 2006, surveying the Coast between Charleston and Big Bay for blue penguins. He became a trustee in 2008.
His interests include conservation, tramping in remote places, botanising, political activism, organic gardening, music and reading.

Rebecca Gibson – Trustee

Rebecca Gibson

Rebecca Gibson has had a lifetime association with the West Coast. Her family has a bach at Okarito, the home of a large penguin colony.
For the last ten years she has worked for the Department of Conservation and is presently working as a community relations and education ranger.  She has a resource management degree, majoring in ecology, from Lincoln University.
Rebecca has a love for the outdoors and has travelled to the Sub Antarctic and worked as a tour guide in Fiordland and a trekking guide in Iceland. She became a Trust member in 2008.


Susan Miller

Susan Miller – Trustee

Susan Miller is based in Franz Joseph and has lived on the West Coast since 1971.  She has been involved in various tourism businesses.
During the late 1980s Susan formed W.A.T.E.R. (Water Acquisition Threatens Ecological Resources) to oppose Okuru Enterprises’ proposal to extract and export water to Saudi Arabia from Tuningfork Creek near Haast, via weekly supertanker visits at Jacksons Bay.
The campaign was successful in preventing supertanker visits and in raising awareness with regional councils nationwide introducing ballast water preventive measures into legislation.
Susan joined the Trust in 2008 and says it is particularly heartening to be involved in an organisation which highlights blue penguins and their precarious existence.

Ian Davidson-Watts – Trustee

Ian Davidson-Watts

Ian  shifted from the UK to the West Coast with his family in 2009 taking up a position of Grey District Council’s Environmental Services Manager.  He had six years in the British Army Air Corps before re-training as an ecologist in 1994 gaining a PhD in animal ecology.
He has worked for England’s statutory nature conservation agency, English Nature (now called Natural England) and headed the ecology team for the Defence Ministry in the UK and Cyprus before moving to the Coast.
Ian is fascinated by New Zealand’s biodiversity and jumped at the chance of getting involved in the Trust.  He also has a love of bats and has authored a number of scientific papers on the ecology of bats in Europe.  As well as his involvement with the Trust he is assisting DOC with research projects on our native mammals.

Reuben Lane – Ranger

Reuben Lane

Reuben grew up on the Kapiti Coast but escaped to the South Island when he was 18.  He has a BSc majoring in ecology from Otago University.
Since 1982 he has done volunteer work for DOC in areas like the Eglington Valley and the Waitutu Forest.  He also spent three years in the Bolivian Amazon helping set up a medical project for the indigenous people of the Rio Beni.
He moved to Charleston on the West Coast in 2000 and has worked for DOC on its Blue Duck recovery programme, stoat and possum control and Westland petrel monitoring.
He began working for the Blue Penguin Trust in 2008, running its predator trapping and penguin monitoring.  He also moonlights as a winemaker in California.

Robyn Janes – Co-ordinator

Robyn Janes

Robyn joined the Trust in October 2010 after a 16 year career as a journalist, most recently as a reporter on TVNZ’s Close Up programme.  She now runs Media Fix, a communications and television production company based in Hokitika.
Robyn loves the outdoors and is relishing the opportunity to learn more about the blue penguin. She hopes to raise the profile of blue penguins, and the trust, to help maintain the penguin populations on the West Coast.