Moths and Butterflies of New Zealand Trust

Carol Stensness lives in the Far North, having recently “escaped” from Auckland (and the traffic), and has had a lifelong interest in Monarchs. She remembers having swan plants at home as a child.

In 2002 she started rearing butterflies in a couple of adapted wooden banana boxes, partly to help save the few plants she had, and also to protect the caterpillars from paper wasps. Now she has numerous caterpillar castles and finds them invaluable to protect growing caterpillars. She has participated in tagging each year which she enjoys.

Carol has a background in administrative and accounting support, has been a member of the MBNZT since 2005, and Treasurer since 2010.

Pictured: Carol with her grandson, Riki.

Jessie McKenzie, our educational advisor, was formerly the Project Manager in Science Education with the Royal Society of NZ. She promoteed, encourages and supports research and technological practice to teachers and their students.

Jessie led CREST, an international awards scheme as well as the Advancing Primary Science programme designed to raise the profile of science teaching and learning in schools.

Hugh Smith joined the trustees in January 2015. He has been a teacher for 31 years, nineteen years of these as a primary school principal.

Throughout his teaching career, Hugh has used the natural environment as a teaching context and has facilitated numerous camps and field trips believing that students should learn about the world they live in by going out and exploring it. Hugh’s work experience has included accounting, residential childcare, youth work and as field assistant with a wildlife film team.

An interest in monarch butterflies covers twenty years during which time he has established extensive plantings of swan plants at school and at home. He has nurtured an interest in monarchs amongst hundreds of young people which has included an involvement in the tagging programme for a number of years.

Recently, he has been volunteering in the butterfly garden at Te Puna Quarry Park.

Hugh lives in Omokoroa, just north of Tauranga. Currently he takes on short term acting principal roles and relief teaching and enjoys reading, gardening, kayaking, environmental projects and travel.

Jacqui lives in Blockhouse Bay, Auckland where she is a freelance writer, desktop publisher, and the persona of ‘Madam Butterfly’ when she visits schools to talk about… butterflies. She also works for Duffy Books in Homes as the regional representative.

Jacqui has been playing with butterflies ever since she can remember; taught all she knew to her two sons and will no doubt do so with her grandchildren too (current count three).

More about Jacqui and her adventures are on websites www.madambutterfly.co.nz and www.bitbybit.co.nz.

Marilyn was immediately attracted by the opportunity of joining the MBNZT Board because she loves butterflies. She takes great delight in watching the adults when they flutter around her garden. Like many others, she takes care to plant with Lepidoptera in mind. A back-breaking job over the summer of 2018-19 was planting out 60 hebe at the top of her large section.

Marilyn is a Deputy Chief Executive (DCE) in the Department of Internal Affairs. As a DCE, she has Executive Board accountabilities as well as leading a diverse branch of over 480 people. Overall, she offers board and governance experience, a strong understanding of strategy and planning, and a track record in delivering priority projects.

She has lived in Wellington for 32 years having moved there from London with her NZ-born partner in 1987. They live in a leafy part of Wellington and are lucky enough to have native birds and bush all around.

Worryingly, though, butterfly numbers have not been as good lately. She hopes that as a Trust Board member she can play her small part in turning this around!

Mary has a background in science, studying physics and astrophysics. She lived in Australia while working on her PhD before moving to Berlin to work as an astronomer. After the birth of her daughter she left astronomy and the family moved back to New Zealand in 2014. It was there that her daughter developed a keen interest in butterflies – and through that, Mary’s passion was stirred.

With the MBNZT, she hopes to use her science and data analysis background to help preserve our ecological heritage for future generations.

She is also a keen gardener-in-training and loves to bring science and nature together for kids and adults alike.

Alma has a bachelor’s degree in zoology from California State Polytechnic University, Pomona and a master’s degree in ecology, evolution and behaviour from the University of Minnesota. Alma studied predator-prey dynamics using immature stages of the monarch butterfly as a model system. She identified important predators and parasitoids as well as other environmental factors that affect monarch survival in North American populations.

Originally from the United States, Alma is living in New Zealand with her family and looking forward to using her understanding of monarch butterflies and her strong science background to help preserve NZ moths and butterflies. Alma enjoys collaborating with others to accomplish shared goals, especially around monarch butterfly conservation and is thrilled to be a part of this Trust.

Joanna has been fascinated by moths and butterflies since childhood.

Her memories are of red admirals, magpie moths, monarchs and common blues on her Grandma’s back lawn.

Occasionally, there were the impressively sized and coloured puriri moths as well.

“I struggle now to find any of our native beauties, or their eggs and caterpillars,” she said.

Joanna’s background is in public policy. She lives on a lifestyle block in the foothills of the northern Tararua Range.

Mary-Anne Merriott came to the Trust through her love of the great Kiwi outdoors and her wish to give back and contribute to conservation in NZ. She would be thrilled to see the forest ringlet re-surge in our backcountry areas and is hoping for lots more butterflies in her own garden too!

Mary-Anne lives in south Auckland with her husband and two rescue cats. Originally from Auckland, she spent many years in the UK, working in global human resources roles in London’s financial sector. She also spent many weekends exploring the UK’s wonderful hiking opportunities and country pubs. Mary-Anne returned to NZ in 2013 and now runs her own human resources consultancy in southern Auckland. She hopes to use her sector expertise working with digital and tech companies to benefit the Trust in our increasingly online world.

Mark Bateman was the NZ Regional Director of Storage King, working to expand the business throughout NZ. He is a Life Member of the Self Storage Association of Australasia, an industry he has worked in for over 25 years. He has retired from the business recently.

While family is his prime interest being a Life Member of Eden Rugby sees me involved in club organisation and watching a lot of rugby during the winter. He also likes classic cars, belonging to the Zephyr Club, and driving a Mark 1 Zephyr as his hobby car.

During the late 90’s, when Auckland was sprayed for the painted apple moth, Mark saw the devastation of monarch butterflies in the Mt Albert area. Time has gone by and he has recently returned to Mt Albert and planted some swan plants. His granddaughter and he watched as the butterflies went through their life cycle. He said that each caterpillar was called ‘George’ which soon turned into lots of Georges, much to his granddaughter’s delight.

The monarch butterfly is a species that brings colour and a point of interest to every garden. He says that if he can help bring colour to our gardens then he thinks that it is a good thing. While he has resigned as a trustee he has agreed to stay with responsibility for the development of our National Butterfly Centre / Te Matauranga o nga Purerehua o Aotearoa.

Maurice Mehlhopt is not sure when he became a butterfly devotee because as a child in Timaru his main job in the summer was to whack all the white butterflies that invaded the family garden. His father would pay him! He was a butterfly bounty hunter!

So maybe by way of conscience about three years ago he popped his first swan plant in his Ponsonby garden and that one plant has now become 20! He says there is a constant swirl of butterflies all around – and in! the house. He says it looks more like something out of Disneyland.

Having spent all his working life in the strongly logical hard edge of the business world, how a slug shuffles on a green coat and emerges as a butterfly would defy the world’s best magicians!

The most surprising reaction has come from the two plants he grew on his berm last year. He was continually amazed at the number of people who stopped to watch the butterflies and the caterpillars, children in particular taking great care to put any caterpillars that had fallen off back onto a leaf!
He said it has been the highlight of his summer.

Brian Patrick is a professional butterfly scientist having been the author of and photographer for seven books on natural history including two that specialised on butterflies.

He has researched Lepidoptera for nearly fifty years in New Zealand and extensively overseas, producing over 250 publications on the subject.

Brian has served as a Ministerial appointment on the Otago Conservation Board, and as Past President of the New Zealand Entomological Society. Previously he was Project Leader of the Otago Museum’s Tropical Butterfly House development and has also been Director of Central Stories Museum, Alexandra, Central Otago.

With his son Hamish he authored BUTTERFLIES OF THE SOUTH PACIFIC in 2012. Currently he works as a consultant scientist based in Christchurch specialising in insect–plant relationships.

As you can tell, butterflies are not only his lifelong passion but a very important part of his work.