High Peak Station co-owner James Guild died aged 75 on September 1.
Mr Guild was a farmer who worked to preserve rural New Zealand’s biodiversity and landscape.
Chairman of the Canterbury Aoraki Conservation Board in the early 2000s, he went on to lead the QEII National Trust in 2011, spending nine years in the role.
The trust has supported the preservation of more than 180,000 hectares of special features on private land, protected in perpetuity under covenants.
He told the ODT in 2020 the trust’s work with farmers was "living proof" that agricultural production and conservation could co-exist on farms.
"It’s a mutually supportive role. We work alongside landowners, and we realise there’s some big costs as pests and weeds don’t respect boundaries and fences need to be replaced over time. The covenant is protected by legislation and you can only wind it up if the land or feature has disappeared."
The attraction for farmers in holding a covenant included preserving a unique feature for future generations, he said.
His leadership extended to the deer industry and for his services he became a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2017.
Among other roles, he led a steering committee responsible for balancing conservation, pastoral farming and recreation at the 183,000ha Molesworth Station.
At High Peak Station, the Guild family put riverbeds, native faces, wetlands and a lake reserve under QEII covenants, with many waterway strips fenced from livestock and planted.
He and wife Anna had been at the nearly 4000ha station since the mid-1970s, earlier Guilds coming from Scotland in 1850 to farm in the region.
The couple transformed the station from a largely undeveloped pastoral holding to a multi-streamed business.
Today, the family manages the station in a four-way partnership, each looking after different areas of the enterprise — farming, tourism operations and beekeeping.
Earlier this year, brothers Hamish and Simon Guild won the Gordon Stephenson Trophy at the National Sustainability Showcase in Hamilton, on behalf of the wider family, earning the title of National Ambassadors for Sustainable Farming and Growing.
The families won the Canterbury Regional Supreme Award in March.
On the station’s website, conservation and sustainability are described as at the core of everything they do at High Peak, as custodians of an intergenerational land-based enterprise.
Friends and family remembered him for his humanity, humility, dry wit and commitment to farming and conservation.
A celebration of his life was held at the station on September 11.
