Janet Wilmshurst receives 2013 Te Tohu Taiao Award for ecological excellence
Published: 28 November 2013
Janet Wilmshurst collecting samples
Janet Wilmshurst is this year’s recipient of the prestigious 2013 Te Tohu Taiao Award from the NZ Ecological Society.
Janet is New Zealand’s leading researcher in the field of palaeoecology. Her sterling research output has changed our understanding of the immediate pre-human state of New Zealand and Pacific island environments, including climatic change, Polynesian settlement of New Zealand and the Pacific and subsequent human impacts on the environment.
She has made major contributions to technique development, to our understanding of New Zealand environmental change over the past 18 000 years, and has resolved long-standing controversies surrounding the settlement of New Zealand and the Pacific.
As well, she has applied this expertise to practical ecological problems such as restoration of indigenous ecosystems. In all these ways, she has made an intellectual contribution that has widespread implications within New Zealand and overseas.
About the Te Tohu Taiao Award for Ecological Excellence
The Te Tohu Taiao award (formerly NZES award) is presented annually to recognise individuals who have made an outstanding contribution to the study and application of ecological science. The award is made to the person(s) who have published the best original research in ecology of New Zealand, and its dependencies (including the Ross Dependency) or person(s) who have made the most outstanding contribution to applied ecology particularly conservation and management.
Past Landcare Research recipients:
1995. Bill Lee, Landcare Research, Dunedin
1997. John McLennan, Landcare Research, Palmerston North
1998. John Innes, Landcare Research, Hamilton
2001. David Wardle, University of Sheffield, England RA
2002. Phil Cowan, Landcare Research, Palmerston North
2006. Matt McGlone, Landcare Research, Lincoln
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