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Ark in the Park appoints new programme manager
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It’s not ideal to start a new role that requires intensive lockdown has had on the fieldwork and community interaction, only for a level project and the amount of three lockdown to be enforced two weeks later. field work the team have
But Samantha Lincoln, Ark in the Park’s newly been able to get done. appointed programme manager, is taking it all in her “The best thing about stride. After moving up to Waitākere from Palmerston this job is getting to put all North, Samantha stepped into the role in late July, my university knowledge officially replacing outgoing manager Gillian Wadams together with all of as the head of West Auckland’s acclaimed conservation the practical field work project. experience that I have.”
Her first three weeks were spent getting her head During the initial level around the new role, figuring our her priorities and the four and level three state of conservation in the Ark. As of mid-August, she’d lockdown earlier this year, been doing all of this from her home office in Titirangi restrictions on volunteer due to level three restrictions. However, she’s spent conservation work meant enough time out in the bush to know how to work well very little fieldwork in isolation. took place. However,
“I spent the last two years working with DOC doing with breeding season vegetation surveys,” she says. “So I covered the whole of approaching Samantha the North Island and some of the South, usually working says the Ark team has for 15 days straight running around the forest or getting plenty to do once they’re thrown in there on a helicopter. able to get back in the
“It was amazing but you have the occasional day when bush. you miss a shower or talking to someone other than “They’re an amazing your three team mates.” team and the outgoing
In between finishing her masters in Biosecurity and project manager has been incredibly supportive,” she Conservation at the University of Auckland in 2016, says. she’s undertaken gecko monitoring, pest plant control “We’ll be monitoring the kōkako in the lead up to and spent a summer on Rakiura/Stewart Island looking breeding season. As well as learning the job and the after the New Zealand southern dotterel. volunteers’ names, I’ve also got a big family of kōkako
“Unlike their northern cousins, those guys don’t live to meet and greet and I have to learn who nested with on beaches, but on the mountain tops. We learned that who last year, and who’s nesting with who this year, and the hard way once. the drama going on with that.”
“I discovered a lot of new tree names. And I think Other than pest control and bird monitoring, one my favourite things I’ve ever seen was working in Samantha’s also aware than any work will have to factor Fiordland and seeing cloud waterfalls.” in the on-going protection of vulnerable kauri from kauri
Samantha speaks with a curious North American dieback disease. accent, courtesy of a stint living in Canada. However, she “We’ve got some special and not yet infected kauri was born on the North Island’s East Coast and is of Ngāti ecosystems, but we do have some areas where it’s just Porou descent. Of all the many places she’s lived and heart breaking watching the trees fall apart. worked in New Zealand, her favourite place is Anaura “But I’ve got to make sure I learn everything I can first. Bay on the East Coast, the home of her family marae. I want to make sure that what we do at the Ark isn’t just
So, notwithstanding any delays or disruptions from limited to the Ark but focusing on things like Predator Covid-19, what has she got on the agenda for Ark in Free 2050 and working with other conservation groups the Park? so we have landscape-scale suppressions. Just one back
“A lot of hand over,” she says. “I’ve been looking yard is not enough, we need a nationwide effort.” You Shop We Deliver at what has been completed, the impact that Covid – Mick Andrew
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