Heavily involved locally in the community and regionally in conservation, Leslie Van Gelder works remotely for an American university and a global organisation and is a shining example of how overseas talent enriches this area.
Van Gelder’s love for conservation stems from her "explorer father" who was a wildlife biologist with the American Museum of Natural History.
"We did trips all over ... I went to Africa with him a bunch of times."
On one trip, the director of a wildlife conservation project in Canada hired her to work for five summers.
After university, she taught high school in New Jersey to pay off student loans, then went to graduate school where she completed a PhD in Place Studies.
While there she met and then later married a New Plymouth-raised archaeologist, Kevin Sharpe.
Working alongside him, she became an eminent archaeologist, specialising in lines written on cave walls, mainly in France, in the Upper Paleolithic era — that’s 10,000 to 35,000 years ago.
"On our first date he told me he wanted to take me to Paradise, which I thought was a hell of a line.
"And he said, ‘no, no, no, it’s this place in New Zealand’ [near Glenorchy], and so after we got together the first time I came to NZ I came up to Paradise, and I fell in love with it the same way he had.
"We would come back every year to see his family and about five years in I didn’t want to leave.
"[In 2006] we were in a conference in Budapest and flew straight here and Kirky [the late Ian Kirkland] sold us a [Rees Valley] section by the end of the day."
Van Gelder then settled in 2008, sadly the year her husband died.
Despite coming from New York, she’d experienced remote living in Canada — 300 people on an island — and loved it.
She says she couldn’t not get involved in a "great community".
She joined and became chair of the Glenorchy Heritage and Museum Group, and also chairs an offshoot group looking for the township to gain ‘dark skies sanctuary’ status.
The process is going well but she’s after MPs’ letters of support once a government’s formed.
Her major local involvement is co-chairing the Southern Lakes Sanctuary, which has 1000-plus volunteers trapping pests and 22 staff.
"There are very few things that unite people the way caring for the environment does, and if we don’t protect the biodiversity, we’re stupid."
They’re facing a worrying funding shortfall, however, meaning Makarora’s precious mohua could be wiped out in one season due to a rat plague.
People internationally seem to understand the importance of protecting NZ’s endangered species more than Kiwis, Van Gelder says.
Recently, she was also appointed to chair the climate reference group that advises the council on climate and biodiversity-related issues.
Meantime, she’s continued working remotely for 22 years for an American university, supervising PhD students, and does strategy consulting for a global organisation — "that actually pays the bills".
So how does she cope with this workload?
"Blaze [her golden retriever] doesn’t get as much walking as she used to, but so many things interconnect.
"My days are pretty full, but it’s all with interesting people."
Van Gelder’s been on a local economic diversification group.
But she says Queenstown also needs to develop a ‘circular economy’ by keeping local products and materials in use for as long as possible, and so becoming "super-resilient".
"As a district, it will make us much stronger going into whatever scenarios the world’s throwing at us.
"There’ll be further pandemics, climate change is going to impact everybody."
However, she says, being on the 45th parallel — which you cross between Queenstown and Glenorchy — "we’re in the best possible place for climate change".
"We’ll have wild weather, but ours will be more stable and so, comparatively, this is paradise.’
