Authors

No biography

I am retired and living in a beautiful seaside village in New Zealand. I started writing in 2000 and have since self-published four New Zealand Historic Fiction novels, two travel stories, based on my 15 years as a tour operator, and one murder mystery novel. I am currently working on a third travel story.

David Towns did his MSc and PhD at the University of Auckland. After six years overseas at universities in the USA and Australia, he returned to New Zealand in 1982 to work with the New Zealand Wildlife Service as a conservation scientist. In 1987 the Wildlife Service became part of the newly formed Department of Conservation (DOC). He stayed with DOC until 2012, when he began a shared appointment between DOC and Auckland University of Technology (AUT), teaching conservation there as a Professor of Applied Conservation. David won the Charles Fleming Award for Environmental Achievement from the Royal Society Te Aparangi for his pioneering research in conservation and island ecosystem ecology in 2019. David retired from AUT as Professor Emeritus in 2020, which gave him time to distil the key messages from a lifetime's conservation experience into this book. He lives in Auckland.

No biography

Sandy's first experience of translocation was a leopard caught in the garden of her childhood home on the outskirts of Nairobi, Kenya. She moved to the UK in her teens and had to abandon her ambition to research zebra. Robin's childhood adventures centred on cycling and the Brighton Youth Orchestra. They met at the University of York where they did ecology degrees and roamed North Yorkshire as Conservation Volunteers. They lived in a rainforest in Malaysia collecting data for Robin's PhD. Sandy went on to work for the UK statutory nature conservation agency, while Robin reinvented himself as an ecotoxicologist. Seventeen years later they moved to Aotearoa. Within weeks they joined the Remutaka Conservation Trust and became accredited kiwi handlers during the translocation of kiwi-nui. In 2010 they moved to Motueka, attracted by the mountains, a more sustainable lifestyle and a strawbale house. They work as ecological contractors and volunteers with Friends of Flora.

Ian Trafford can be found thinking in the vege patch, writing while slumped on the couch, or at the beaches and in the bush of his local Abel Tasman National Park in New Zealand - taking time out, working with his camera or guiding hiking tourists. During his childhood on a farm near Te Karaka, west of Gisborne, his father came home one day with his grandfather's secret First World War diaries. Ian soon knew that some day the real, raw story of our Kiwi boys in this un-great war, and afterwards, needed to be told. The time to write came decades later, once other work was done- teaching, guiding river rafters and sea kayakers, writing school reading books and a guidebook, full-time photography, and in times of desperation, pulling apples from the trees of orchardists or stuffing hops into a shredder. The story from the diaries was written on the couch, with lots of emotion, as if his old grandad, Alick, was sitting there as well.

CARALISE TRAYES debuts The Final Choice after 10 years' journalism and breaking national headlines on the front lines with Fairfax Media. Caralise has worked as a communications assistant and freelance writer. The Kiwi mother-of-two writes with heart, passion and personality, and is available to speak at events on the subject of this book. www.captureandtell.nz

No biography

Russell Tregonning, an orthopaedic and knee specialist, trained in New Zealand, England and Canada. A senior consultant for over 40 years, he also lectured at Otago University medical school in Wellington, New Zealand. A resident of Wellington, he is an environmental activist, working with a team of medical professionals to alert the public to the dangers that the climate crisis poses to human health.

No biography

With a background in photography and children's publishing, Jennifer is now a full-time writer living in Wellington, New Zealand, with her husband, son, daughter, dog and cat. When not at her writing desk Jennifer can be found in the garden.

No biography