Dr Greg Sherley becomes a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to conservation

Greg Sherley in Apia.

Dr Greg Sherley, from Paraparaumu, has become a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to conservation.

The New Year Honours accolade came as a surprise.

He said it was rare for someone working in the environment sector to get recognition like this so it was “a real compliment to realise the wider community is placing worth/value to conservation work both in New Zealand and in the wider Pacific”.

His passion for conservation started from a young age when he roamed, without restriction, the outdoors of New Zealand bird watching, fishing and hunting.

“During my teenage years the issue of logging native forests was at its peak which helped focus my professional aspirations to protect native biodiversity.”

He praised the unreserved support of family, especially wife Brenda, for the flexibility allowing him to pursue unusual professions like a wildlife scientist in New Zealand, invasive species/bird conservation adviser for the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme and task manager for the United Nations Environment Programme based in Apia, and a year in Cape Town as manager of the Global Invasive Species Programme.

Career highlights included completing and publishing his doctorate on the breeding ecology of rifleman, mainstreaming the conservation of invertebrates in the Department of Conservation, establishing a Pacific region-wide invasive species and biosecurity programme which continues to grow, establishing two permanent biodiversity conservation endowment trust funds in the Pacific, and establishing the sub-regional office of the United Nations Environment Programme (now UNE) in Apia, Samoa.

“All of these have a biodiversity conservation focus for New Zealand and the wider Pacific region and would not have been possible without the collaboration and support of outstanding colleagues from national government, inter-governmental agencies, non-government organisations, plus my family.”

Dr Sherley saw conservation of biodiversity as “a pursuit about conserving our heritage for future generations and protecting their opportunities including many as yet undefined”.

“Biodiversity also has a right to survival in its own right — it does not exist simply to serve mankind.

“Given we know relatively so little about the natural world, I think preserving natural systems is a matter of future survival not only in the physical sense but also culturally and spiritually.”