The morning birdsong in Fiordland used to be deafening. Prue Wallis remembers those dawn choruses from her early days aboard the Ranginui, a converted Scottish puffer boat used during Tim’s early deer shooting and live capture days, and on which the family holidayed whenever possible. Year by year, she watched and listened as that symphony slowly diminished to silence.
“We used to wake up in the morning and it was noisy and then just slowly it went silent until there was nothing left, it was there until it wasn’t, and that was startling,” Wallis recalls. “I became very strongly aware of the predator side of conservation at that point. To see the feathers of penguins on the beach, it’s just awful.”
That gradual quieting of New Zealand’s wild places helped spark Wallis’s dedication to conservation, leading to her longtime involvement with the New Zealand Nature Fund (formerly NZ National Parks and Conservation Foundation). As a founding board member, she has witnessed the organisation’s evolution from a straightforward grant-making body to a significant force in New Zealand conservation.
When NZNF founder and former Conservation Minister Denis Marshall approached her in the late 1990s to join the board, Wallis initially suspected she might have been chosen as “the token white, South Island female.” But her perspective as someone deeply connected to both conservation and high-country farming proved invaluable. She understood the delicate balance between land use and preservation in a way few others did.
“Lord of the Rings and other films generated trouble for high country farmers,” she explains. “People would look at Mount Earnslaw and where scenery was filmed and say, ‘it’s so beautiful, it shouldn’t be littered with fences and sheep.’ But the reason our high country is beautiful because it has been intelligently and lovingly and diligently cared for by several generations of people who know what they’re doing. Who get up at four in the morning in the middle of winter to do things for the land.”
In the early days, the NZNF operated primarily as a grant-making body, distributing funds from two major sources: a TransPower grant and a generous donation from both Hutchins family of Real Journeys and Davies family of Tourism Milford. “We called for applications twice a year,” Wallis explains. “I would say possibly 50% of them were from DOC. We were helping to fund DOC right back then – tracks, predator control, huts and all sorts of things.”
The Foundation’s work shifted dramatically during the early 2000s. The department attempted to monopolise conservation fundraising, forcing the NZNF to look to a different structure. “We just had to adapt,” Wallis says. This period taught the Foundation valuable lessons about the importance of independence and the need for sustainable funding models. It also highlighted the unique role the NZNF could play as an intermediary between private donors and conservation projects.
“What we found ourselves doing when we tried to fundraise with the corporates was brokering,” Wallis explains. “You go to Air New Zealand or anyone like that and say, ‘conservation money,’ and they want a project to report to their shareholders. They want Save the Kiwi or something they can put in their annual report – one thing they can hang that on, so the shareholders can see what’s happening to the money they’re not getting.”
Drawing on her experiences in both the high country and conservation sectors, Wallis has helped shape the NZNF’s approach to partnership and collaboration. She understands that effective conservation requires working with landowners and farmers, not against them.
Today, Wallis remains enthusiastic about the NZNFs work, particularly in species recovery. She envisions a future where the NZNF serves as an umbrella organisation supporting conservation efforts nationwide.
“The whole country has got hundreds of little trusts – the kea there or the kiwi there, or the birds there, or the tracks or the huts,” she says. “To have an umbrella fund like the Nature Fund is tremendously valuable, because we don’t beat any particular drum. That’s not our mission.”
Her goal is to see the NZNF establish a substantial endowment fund. “I would like to see us distributing money that’s safely invested so that we’ve always got funds that are not tied to any project,” she explains. “Otherwise, you’re going on brokering, spending administrative funds on marrying up income and grants with specific projects.”
Despite multiple attempts to step back from the NZNF board in recent years, Wallis continues to serve. “Not because I don’t enjoy it – I enjoy it very much. I find it very interesting still. But I have a horror of people who stay on boards when they cease being useful.” Unsurprisingly, that wry wit and self-awareness is one of the many traits that make her such an insightful member.
She maintains involvement in numerous other charitable and cultural organisations, serving as founding patron of the Festival of Colour in Wanaka and supporting various arts initiatives. But conservation remains central to her work, informed by years of witnessing both the beauty and vulnerability of New Zealand’s wilderness.
Her colleagues value her continued involvement, particularly her ability to connect people and her institutional knowledge. While she may not claim specific technical skills, her understanding of both conservation and rural New Zealand remains unmatched and invaluable.
For Wallis, it all comes back to those silent mornings in Fiordland – a reminder of what’s at stake. She’s determined to see the NZNF grow into an organisation capable of supporting conservation efforts across the country, helping restore the dawn chorus that once echoed through New Zealand’s wild places.
Her vision for the NZNF reflects the patience and long-term thinking she’s learned from conservation, high country farming, and from her remarkable husband’s modus operandi, while understanding that meaningful change requires both immediate action and sustainable planning for the future.
