This is an edited version of a speech at a memorial event for Lesley on 9/6/24.

Lesley Shand was a force of nature, for nature. She had abundant determination, persistence, enthusiasm, and kindness for people and wild places. They were invaluable qualities during more than 40 years of campaigning to protect Canterbury's high country, lakes and rivers, and West Coast forests, wetlands, and mountain tops, from pests, weeds, logging, mining, and other inappropriate development. Her efforts focused on a broad sweep of country from Arthur's Pass to the Lewis Pass, including Lake Sumner, Loch Katrine, the Hurunui, Hope, Waiau and Boyle catchments, and the Maruia Valley, going further afield as required.

Lesley was a strong advocate for Arthur's Pass National Park and a regular user of the park's Outdoor Education Centre. She played a key role in getting a major addition to the park - the Cox-Binser area in 1988. Former Forest and Bird President, Dr Gerry McSweeney, says Lesley and Forest and Bird were also central to the less publicised case of protecting 176 hectares of beech forest and wetlands at Lake Grace near the Mounds of Misery, through the Nature Heritage Fund.

One of Lesley's many achievements was to advocate successfully for the establishment of the Lewis Pass National Reserve, which gave extra legal protection to the 13,737 ha. area. The short nature walk on Lewis Pass is a beautiful place to remember Lesley. She combined political advocacy with practical action. She was a doer, an activist skilled at encouraging others to get active. Early morning phone calls before breakfast was a favourite tactic to tell people about letters that needed to be written, a march or action that was happening or councils or Government agencies that were behaving badly.

She frequently highlighted issues that others had overlooked or downplayed. In the 1980s and 1990s this included the need to control introduced pests and weeds to better protect our distinctive landscapes and indigenous nature. On high country walks and tramps she would often carry a granular herbicide to sprinkle on and kill broom bushes. Many wilding pines fell to her trusty loppers and saw. She helped give the menace of wilding conifers a much higher public profile and lobbied to have forestry companies and the Ministry of Forestry face up to their responsibilities.

One example - Lesley was a shareholder in Carter Holt Harvey and at their 1993 AGM she stood and spoke out about the extensive spread of wilding pines from the company's Hanmer forests onto the Amuri Range. This ensured considerable news media coverage of that issue, rather than Carter Holt's financial results. It also usefully linked the concerns of farmers and conservationists.

Himalayan thar are another introduced interloper and pest in the mountain lands of the central Southern Alps. On the North Canterbury Conservation Board and on Department of Conservation (DoC's) Thar Liaison Group in the 1990s Lesley pushed hard for years to ensure that the department's Thar Management Plan was about controlling thar, rather than managing them for recreational hunting.

As she said, thar browsing turned tussocks into "worn out toothbrushes". 30 years on, that fight continues. Lesley completed a BSc in geography in 1994 with papers in ecology, conservation management and forestry. She said she did the degree so she could "read the hills better" and make her arguments more effective.

First Rule Of Effective Activism Is To Turn Up

Lesley turned up at innumerable Hurunui District Council and other meetings in the 1990s to speak for nature as the district plan was developed under the Resource Management Act. With her unique passion and the mana of being from a recognised farming family (though promoting a very different view from Federated Farmers), Lesley did her utmost to convince the Council of the value of matagouri shrub lands, the Hurunui backcountry and the need for rules to control landholder burning, earthworks, vegetation clearance, and damage to wetlands. Lesley would have been outraged at the Government's Fast Track Approvals Bill which sweeps away public participation and the meagre district plan protections which her, Forest and Bird, and DoC's advocacy achieved.

Second Rule Is To Get Publicity

In 1984 when the Grey County Council felled several kilometres of beech trees beside Palmer's Road near Springs Junction, Lesley brought this to public attention and outrage at the loss of a magnificent leafy avenue of trees. In 1987 she and other local residents stood in front of bulldozers to stop Westpac and Elders from logging 200 ha. of mature beech and podocarp forest at Terako Downs. The area was later purchased by the Forest Heritage Fund for protection.

Native forest logging on public land in Aotearoa finally ended in 1999 when an incoming Labour government axed Timberlands' proposed beech logging scheme after a massive public campaign. Lesley provided much practical support to Native Forest Action activists and Forest and Bird during this campaign. 120,000 hectares of Timberlands' managed forests on the West Coast were later transferred to DoC.

As a teacher Lesley knew the value of enabling people to experience nature and also see the damage done by logging and irresponsible development. She led and participated in countless field trips to help protect North Westland's beech forests, particularly the Maruia Valley and Station Creek. Participants would marvel while tracking bats at dusk one day and then be appalled when shown felled trees and wrecked forest the next. Connecting people with places inspires action to protect them and helps build a movement for change.

The campaign to protect the Denniston Plateau from open cast coal mining and Save Happy Valley benefited from Lesley mobilising Canterbury folk to go on field trips to see what was at stake. So did the campaign for a water conservation order to protect her beloved Hurunui River from a dam and a massive irrigation scheme.

In the early 2000s Lesley's Montreal Street flat (in central Christchurch) was effectively campaign HQ for the WECAN push to show the increasing pollution of Canterbury's rivers and streams, and wind back agribusiness dominance of Environment Canterbury in the 2004 regional council elections. Lesley joined with Waikari sculptor and writer Sam Mahon in artivist actions using politician puppets to highlight those responsible for poor decisions about the region's water.

Four new and more progressive councillors (including the writer) were finally elected in 2007 and started to influence decisions for the better. A National ACT government encouraged by agribusiness and local mayors retaliated by scrapping democracy and replacing 14 elected regional councillors with appointed commissioners.

Vigilant Watchdog

Lesley well understood that Government agencies and statutory boards need vigilant watchdogs; and the positive effect which observers vigorously taking notes could have on meeting discussions and decisions. In the 1980s and 90s, agendas were not online, and meetings were not livestreamed, so this commitment to accountability and finding out what these agencies were up to, meant a nomadic lifestyle.

Lesley travelled thousands of kilometres for meetings of the Victoria Forest Park Advisory Committee, Hurunui Water Management Zone Committee, Thar Liaison Group, and when she was no longer a member, the Aoraki Conservation Board. She often hitchhiked or took her little white Ford Escort van with its home tanned sheepskins, crammed with outdoor gear, ropes, maps, a pack and sleeping bag. Observing meetings where agency officials did not particularly want a public presence and certainly did not make you feel welcome, required strength and courage.

The value of Lesley's work and her conservation advocacy and campaigning was formally recognised with an Old Blue Award from Forest and Bird in 1988 for services to high country conservation; and being made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 1999 for services to conservation; and a Distinguished Life Member of Forest and Bird in 2005.

Her legacy is in the places she helped protect through leading people on adventures, inspiring and encouraging more people to become active on behalf of nature and on issues bigger than us. It is this citizen action which changes agency and Government decisions. As Lesley said: "You can never fight for something on your own. You are only successful by the number of people you get interested in a subject or an area. By taking people to wild places and letting those places weave their own magic, people can become as fascinated as we are in protecting them".

ANNE EDMUNDSON

- Murray Horton