He first started possum trapping when he was 11 and says being involved in a cutting edge project to rid such a huge area of predators is his “dream job”.

A graduate of the DOC Trainee ranger programme Tom worked with the country’s rarest parakeet, orange-fronted parakeet/kākāriki karaka in Arthurs Pass for ten years. Most recently he has managed predator control for the Rakaia Braided River programme protecting similar birds to the ones he will be working with as part of Te Manahuna Aoraki.

We look forward to working with Tom.