Founding member of the Environment Institute of Australia and New Zealand, Dr Judith Roper-Lindsay, was recently awarded Fellow membership.

After over 20 years with Boffa Miskell Ltd in Christchurch, Dr Judith Roper-Lindsay is now an independent ecological consultant based in North Canterbury, New Zealand.

Judith has a long-standing interest in the development of policy, planning and management based on good biodiversity and ecological science. Having trained and carried out field contracts in the UK, she has worked with project developers, planners and landscape architects; with local and central government; and with individual land-owners and managers throughout New Zealand.  

Through working groups and advisory roles Judith has contributed to issues such as the development of criteria for assessment of significance of indigenous vegetation and habitats under the RMA, opportunities for protection of biodiversity on private land (as member of a Ministerial Advisory Group) and development of Guidance for Offsetting in New Zealand (as member of the Department of Conservation’s Ecologists’ Working Group).

Judith is currently a member of the Waimakariri Zone Water Management Committee, working with other land and water users and the community to implement the Canterbury Water Management Strategy. 

Judith was a founding member of the Environment Institute of Australia in 1988 and has been a New Zealand member since the New Zealand Chapter was created in 2003. She is the principal author of the Ecological Impact Assessment Guidelines which were published by EIANZ last year and which received the RMLA’s Documentation Award, at the RMLA 2015 conference.

She is a past President of the NZ Ecological Society and NZ Chapter of EIANZ, a Certified Environmental Practitioner (CEnvP) and member of the Chartered Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management (CIEEM).