Wild Hero Award
Featured
The New Zealand Festival of Nature is proud to recognise the late Neville Peat as our 2026 Wild Hero, honouring a remarkable lifetime devoted to conservation, storytelling and championing the wild places that make Aotearoa unique.
Some people dedicate their lives to protecting wildlife. Others dedicate theirs to helping people fall in love with it. Jeannie Hayden has done both.
In 2024, Wild Dunedin's Wild Hero Award recognised an entire team whose dedication is helping secure the future of some of New Zealand's rarest wildlife.
After nearly 40 years protecting Otago's coast and marine wildlife, Jim Fyfe was named Wild Dunedin's 2023 Wild Hero.
In 2022, Wild Dunedin did something a little different. Rather than honouring a single individual, the Wild Hero Award celebrated a collective effort, acknowledging Brendan Flack and the East Otago Taiāpure Management Committee.
We are part of a long list of people, academics, students and conservationists, who considered Phil a true Wild Hero.
Every thriving landscape has people working quietly behind the scenes to protect it. On Otago Peninsula, Lala Frazer has been one of those people for more than four decades.
Wild Dunedin presented our first Wild Hero Award to Sir Alan Mark in 2019 at Otago Museum. Born in Dunedin and living most of his life here, Sir Alan is a true local hero who has great mana throughout Aotearoa.