Tane’s Tree Trust’s work supporting the weaving of native forest back into our landscapes.

Jacqui has nearly 30 years’ experience as a forestry scientist. In her teens, she was convinced not to do a forestry degree in NZ, due to prejudice against women in forestry at the time (gratefully, that has changed!) but she still felt drawn to the industry. In her university summers, she worked in Westland for the NZ Forest Service in its tumultuous dying days. Her BSc Honours degree focussed on native forest ecology. After graduating, she did ecological work, and was a research assistant at FRI (now Scion).

Jacqui then completed a PhD in Forest Science at Texas A&M University, while working part-time for the Texas Forest Service. After returning to NZ, she spent 10 years at FRI, in R&D in propagation and deployment of radiata-pine, Douglas-fir and specialty species. Jacqui then set up Aimers Consulting, focusing on forest research, sustainable land use, and technical communications. In 2018, she became a Tane’s Tree Trust trustee, and was recently involved in O Tatou Ngahere (https://pureadvantage.org/o-tatou-ngahere/), but continues some work with exotic species.

Jacqui advocates for the wider values of forests and supports different types of forestry with different species - as part of wise, sustainable land use.