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Geoff Harrow
QSM
Geoff Harrow at QSM investiture ceremony in 2017
Harrow at investiture, 2017
Born(1926-12-20)December 20, 1926
DiedJanuary 16, 2023(2023-01-16) (aged 96)
Occupation(s)Mountaineer, conservationist
Known forConservation of Hutton's shearwater

Geoff Harrow QSM (20 December 1926 – 16 January 2023) was a New Zealand amateur ornithologist and skilled mountaineer who, on 20 February 1965, found the previously unknown and unexpected nesting grounds of the threatened Hutton’s shearwater (Puffinus huttoni) or tītī, at 1,200-1,800 m in the Seaward Kaikōura mountains,[1][2] He devoted the following 50 years to helping save the species from extinction.

Early life

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Geoff Harrow spent his early years in Ashburton, later in Christchurch, and hours studying birds. The youngest of five growing up in the Depression, he had the most comprehensive bird’s egg collection of anyone at Riccarton School.[3] He joined Forest & Bird aged 12.[4]

Hutton’s shearwater – rediscovery

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The Hutton’s shearwater was first formally described by Gregory Mathews in 1912 and named in honour of Frederick Hutton, former curator of the Canterbury Museum, Christchurch, who died in 1905. It took 50 years for the species to be confirmed correctly as the Hutton's shearwater.[5]

In 1964 while visiting Kaikōura in his job as a pharmaceutical representative, Geoff Harrow learnt from a local, Ivan Hislop, that the elusive Hutton’s shearwater was probably nesting high up in the Kowhai Valley, the only seabird to nest so far inland.  But nothing was confirmed.[3]

The New Zealand bird photographer and author M. F. Soper had told Harrow he knew of no seabird which nested at such height and the former director of the then National Museum Dr Robert Falla wrote that up to 1965 “every accessible islet and stack from Banks Peninsula to Cook Strait had been examined by field parties with no result”. Soper encouraged Harrow to return to Kaikōura and follow the lead given.[6]

Harrow became determined to find the birds and drawing on his considerable skills as a tramper and mountaineer, climbed into difficult mountainous country finding three carcasses[4] and had them identified by Falla in Wellington.

Harrow reported his discovery to Ngāi Tahu and Ngāti Kurī kamatua, who recognised the bird as the Kaikōura tītī, sometimes called the mountain muttonbird, a taonga as a valuable food source for the Maori.[3]


His re-discovery of the highest breeding seabirds in the world was likened at the time to the discovery by Geoffrey Orbell of the previously considered extinct takahē, near Lake Te Anau in the Murchison Mountains in 1948. The Hutton’s shearwater’s nesting grounds had been one of New Zealand’s great unsolved natural mysteries.[7]

Over many years Geoff Harrow made frequent trips up the Kowhai Valley, and working along all the ranges in every high basin both on the Seaward and Inland Kaikōuras often alone and at weekends to locate, monitor and record as many birds as he could. He found eight nesting sites, although within 20 years only two remained as a result of predation by stoats, pigs and kea. On one of these trips his son Paul discovered a rare and distinctive black-eyed species of gecko (Hoplodactylus kahutarae).[8]

The birds were known in Kaikōura from the regular occurrences of crash-landing in the town during autumn, but the location of their nesting sites was unknown. The first colony Harrow found was remote, and access particularly difficult,so he asked local residents where another colony might be accessible for the purposes of monitoring and research. One response from Sam Pilbrow of Puhi Peaks Station, reported that birds would crash into the lights of the homestead on foggy nights between September and March. After several visits to explore the western area of the station, Harrow discovered a breeding colony on steep bluffs. This is now known as the Shearwater Stream colony. This colony on the Puhi Peaks Station is one of the only two remaining natural breeding colonies of the endangered Hutton's shearwater.[9]

Harrow wrote a series of reports for the New Zealand Ornithological Society journal Notornis and he knew the birds needed full-time attention, saying “I’m not an ornithologist; I’m not a scientist.”[3]

Over three years from 1996 Richard Cuthbert, then a PhD student and also a keen mountaineer, continued Harrow's work, with the support of the Department of Conservation and a scholarship from the University of Otago. He met and worked together with Harrow and they became friends.[10]

He founded the Hutton's Shearwater Charitable Trust in October 2008,[2] and with the support of his wife Lyndsey, raised $300,000 within the first year to draw national attention to their plight.[11]

An artificial colony for the birds, Te Rae o Atiu, was established on Kaikōura Peninsula beginning in 2005 with tanslocations of about 10 young birds. By 2024 the numbers had reached about 100[2]. A predator-proof fence was erected in 2010.  Further translocations took place in 2012 and 2013. The Trust now partners with the Department of Conservation, Te Rununga o Kaikoura and Whale Watch to manage this artificial colony and the project remains a source of pride in Kaikōura. Harrow was a committee member until 2013 and a patron of the Trust until his death. [4]

Harrow believed that there was a couple of million birds in the area he knew, which was reduced by about 500,000 in 25 years. Of 13 November 2016 the 7.8 Kaikōura earthquake destroyed three sub-colonies of shearwaters buried under thousands of tonnes of rock.  An estimated 18,000 birds may have been lost.[12]

Mountaineer

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Geoff Harrow developed a passion for tramping and climbing aged 14, after meeting members of the Canterbury Mountaineering climb on a visit to Arthur’s Pass. He had cycled from Christchurch.  He (Cuthbert p 41) was one of the few to have climbed all the 3000 metre peaks in NZ and every peak in the Aoraki Mt Cook National Park within four years. [ no.] He achieved a number of first ascents. He was also a founding member of the Craigieburn Ski Club, where he met his wife Lyndsey in 1955.

Mountaineer and former head of the Department of Conservation and the NZ Antarctic Programme Hugh Logan spoke of Harrow’s skill and stamina as a mountaineer, and of his “explosion onto paid tribute to Harrow’s climbing and mountaineering skill” as a teen, climbing Mt Armstrong in about 1946. [1]

In January 1953 Geoff Harrow climbed the east face of Mt Sefton.  This was described as “a breakthrough for a new climbing generation that sparked a modern phase of New Zealand mountaineering. It was the first such climb by a guideless party and the ‘first occasion on which a face of such steepness and exposure had been attempted in New Zealand, causing New Zealand climbers to rethink what was technically possible’. [13]

Harrow was on the famous 1954 Edmund Hillary-led NZAC Himalayan Expedition to climb the 8463 metre Mt Makalu, when Hillary was evacuated to safety after he broke several ribs trying to rescue fellow cli[mber, Jim McFarlane, from a crevasse.  Harrow then climbed Baruntse (7,162 m) in the Himalayas with Colin Todd on 30 May 1954.[13]

In June 1966 he had a narrow miss when an avalanche on Mount Rolleston killed Jeffrey Wilby, Bruce Ferguson, Colin Robertson and Michael Harper in one of New Zealand's worst alpine disasters.   Harrow sensed danger and refused to camp in the area overnight.[4]

In 1966 he also spent months providing specialist advice to penguin researchers and helped establish the Canterbury Mountain Rescue Radio service in 1967.

He climbed Mt Kilimanjaro in Kenya aged 72 and skied into his 90s.[1]

To his family Harrow was “the all-or nothing man, black and white,”his daughter Belinda said  “He was either totally and utterly boots and all into something, or not at all and like that about everything, a driven, self-confessed obsessive”). He was an optimist, a do-it-yourselfer and an enthusiastic booster of others”. [4]

Honours and awards

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Harrow was awarded a QSM in 2007 for his services to conservation, mountain safety and club skiing, and a Forest & Bird Old Blue Award.[14][1]

On 20 February 2015, 50 years to the day of his discovery, Geoff Harrow was honoured with a korowai, and made a kaumātua to celebrate his long involvement with the species. The ceremony was attended by representatives from Ngāti Kuri, Ngāi Tahu, the Hutton’s Shearwater Trust, local land owners, Department of Conservation, volunteers and the community, who remain committed to the project,[15]

References

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  1. ^ a b c d MacDuff, Keiller (24 January 2023). "Adventurer, outdoorsman, conservationist Geoff Harrow farewelled in Christchurch". Stuff.
  2. ^ a b c "The Hutton's Shearwater". Hutton's Shearwater Charitable Trust. Retrieved 2025-06-13.
  3. ^ a b c d White, Rebekah (May 2015). "Birdman". New Zealand Geographic. Retrieved 2025-06-13.
  4. ^ a b c d e MacDuff, Keiller (16 September 2023). "Life story: Saviour of seabirds, skilled adventurer and booster". The Press. Retrieved 29 June 2025.
  5. ^ Cuthbert 2017, p. 29.
  6. ^ Cuthbert 2017, pp. 58–59.
  7. ^ Cuthbert 2017, p. 45.
  8. ^ Cuthbert 2017, p. 197.
  9. ^ Cuthbert 2017, p. 61.
  10. ^ Cuthbert 2017, pp. 143–145.
  11. ^ "The Hutton's Shearwater". Hutton's Shearwater Charitable Trust. Retrieved 2025-06-13.
  12. ^ Cuthbert 2017, p. 186.
  13. ^ a b Cuthbert 2017, p. 41.
  14. ^ "A lifelong passion | Geoff Harrow | Forest and Bird". www.forestandbird.org.nz. 2023-01-18. Retrieved 2025-06-13.
  15. ^ Cuthbert 2017, p. 187.

Sources

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Further reading

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Media related to Geoff Harrow at Wikimedia Commons



Category:1926 births Category:2023 deaths Category:New Zealand mountain climbers Category:New Zealand conservationists Category:Recipients of the Queen's Service Medal Category:People from Christchurch

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