Obituary: Emma Waterhouse (25 December 1968 – 7 March 2021)
In March of this year we lost one of our strongest advocates for conservation on Aotea, Emma Waterhouse. What an extraordinary woman. Here, we share some of Emma’s achievements and the responses of her friends to her loss.
Emma Waterhouse at start of Withey’s Track, Aotea (Photo: Kate Waterhouse)
Emma graduated with a Masters in Environmental Management at Canterbury in 1991 then became the first Environmental Manager of Antarctica New Zealand, aged just 25. She delivered the first State of the Environment Report for the Ross Sea and had a summer stint as base manager at Scott Base, as well as participating as a NZ delegate at the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meetings. She then went on to work at the Ministry of Fisheries as a senior policy advisor, leading NZ’s Pacific Tuna delegations. But she was confronted with the full extent of regulatory capture of fisheries management in NZ so left for UK via China, Central Asia and Turkey. Based in Cambridge and London she worked as an environmental advisor for several huge infrastructure projects. In 2010 she moved to Sydney to join Coffey (now Tetratech). The five years there saw her survive the first brush with cancer, and cement her credibility as an environmental advisor globally. She advised governments and projects in the Asia Pacific region on climate, social, and environmental impacts, and related policy, planning and mitigations. She made several trips to Iraq to advise on large oil projects, including visits to sheiks where body armour was required. There wasn’t much she would not do for te taiao. But she was always drawn back to Aotea Great Barrier, where she had spent many a long summer with her family, in the footsteps of her grandmother who came to the island in the 1920s and her parents, Mike and Glen, who met at Glenfern.
As a child she grew up following her Dad Mike around Te Paparahi, hearing kokako, kākā, and petrels at night, exploring the creeks and forest, walking the beach and fishing from the rocks. This shaped her world and she always felt connected to the island wherever she was – on tramping and climbing trips in the South Island, on travels to India, Central Asia, and Europe, and also Antarctica, the UK, the Pacific and Australia, where she lived and worked for many years. In 2001, with her sister Kate, she bought land at Okiwi where she spent a lot of time with family restoring the part of the Okiwi stream that flowed across their land between the reserve and the Aotea Conservation Park behind Okiwi. As Kate said:
“She loved nothing better than to spend a day next to the Okiwi stream, planting, weeding, clearing rat traps and listening to the birdlife that has returned to the river in the 20 years since we started this work. She was looking forward to being a part of Tū Mai Taonga and making a predator free Aotea possible.”
Metrosideros fulgens (Photo: Barry Scott)
Emma was passionate about protecting the birds of the sea and the land. She presented the trust’s submission against the CRL marine dumping consent and was looking forward to progressing marine restoration around Aotea. Given Okiwi has the sole breeding population of kākāriki on Aotea, Emma was determined to do all she could to protect them. With help from Serena Simmonds she initiated two surveys of nest sites in the Okiwi Valley, which lead to an intensification of trapping to protect nest trees. She was passionate about the birds of the Hauraki Gulf and greater East Coast of the North Island. Her commitment to advocating for those birds and their habitat is highlighted In the Autumn 2017 issue of Environmental News, which focused on the importance of the chain of islands down the east coast of the NI that form the “Seabird Super Highway”.
“Emma cared deeply about the natural environment and was prepared to put herself out there to support it, especially on Aotea where she and her family had had a close association for many years and across several generations. She (and her family) purchased land here and have spent many hours planting trees along its waterways and undertaking pest control to provide habitat for and protect native species. In addition she gave her time, passion and energy to support many other environmental initiatives and groups on Aotea, including Glenfern Sanctuary, GBI Environmental Trust, island wide bird counts, and the Okiwi Community Ecology Project.”
And from Emma Cronin, Chair of the Glenfern Sanctuary Trust:
“Emma’s many connections and efforts have significantly contributed in leveraging the financial support we now see evident on the island towards progressing pest management for this truly ‘great’ place. Emma was taken from us too soon to experience the benefits of her and many other peoples’ work in making this happen. Her absence will be felt deeply by her family, friends and colleagues and is a huge loss to conservation for Aotea and indeed Aotearoa/New Zealand. We will continue her conservation work with her forever in our hearts and minds and remember her always in the birdsong that will flourish in a future Aotea.”
Emma was editor of Environmental News from 2016 to the end of 2020. She set a very high standard for this publication, with well researched articles presented at a high standard and illustrated with high quality images. She was a trustee of Great Barrier Island Environmental Trust from 2016 to 2021. She was instrumental in initiating the Aotea Bird Count, and at the time of her death was Leading the State of Environment Report for Aotea Update on the State of Our Birds, working with multiple stakeholders and data owners to bring together a cohesive picture of Aotea’s birdlife to 2020. She was also a Trustee of the Glenfern Sanctuary and Kotuku Peninsula Charitable Trust from 2016-2020. Current chair of the Glenfern Trust, Rupert Wilson, shared this impression of her:
“Emma was an inspiration to the Glenfern Trust - clear and focussed in her contributions around the Trust table; a leader on all conservation and environmental topics and a wonderfully warm and generous personality on all fronts. We all paused and took special note whenever Emma spoke or wrote to us, such was the value and wisdom of her ideas and the stature which Emma had within the Trust.”
“Emma’s role in the Environmental Trust was generally to defuse contentious issues at Trust meetings, seek the common ground and move us on to the next matter on the agenda. She was very skilled at this. The social and community aspects of the conservation agenda were much clearer to her than to me. I tended to concentrate on the ecological data, which always seemed pivotal to me; the over-layer of community concern was much less clear, but ultimately decisive when it came to action. Progress in the bigger aspects of environmental improvement, biodiversity conservation and human aspirations requires a team of people with mutual respect and the ability to see the long-term goal. Emma had this, she was the perfect team player everybody trusted.”
“A lady so dedicated to being a voice for our flora and fauna which captured her love of Aotea and her strong belief in its conservation. I will always remember her gentle way, her pragmatic approach and a smile that lit up the room. Arohanui dear Emma.”
Emma’s presence and impact on Aotea will be sorely missed. On behalf of the Trustees of AGBET we extend our sincere condolences to Emma’s family, her Mum and Dad, Mike and Glen, sister Kate and partner Rohan, nieces Grace, Evie and Hazel, and brothers Hamish and Angus and partners Maria and Steph.
Emma died of an aggressive secondary breast cancer, but before she passed away she was able to set up a scholarship for women studying natural sciences at the University of Auckland. She hoped this award would support more women to pursue careers as she had in the protection and restoration of our natural world.
To donate please go to the University of Auckland’s website: https://www.auckland.ac.nz/en/giving/donate/a-z-list-of-funds/emma-waterhouse-scholarship-for-women-in-natural-sciences.html