Sam Neill brought wit, grit and heart to stand for nature and the people of Aotearoa.
While he got great pleasure observing the web of life on his beloved farm, he saw the bigger picture too and was a passionate advocate for the protection of nature.
One expression of that was his 24-year commitment to the Sustainability Council, of which he was a founding board member, along with Sir Peter Elworthy, Professor Garth Cooper, Annabel Langbein and Susan Devoy, later to be joined by Professor David Williams. The Council’s work, which they have directed together, has been built on the belief that the tough environmental issues of our times are rarely just matters of science or any single specialty, and that the overall interests of New Zealand must be clearly in focus when charting a way forward.
Sam’s intellect and courage shone through wherever he observed a lack of foresight or the prioritisation of the narrow interests of the few to the detriment of the many. He had the capacity to integrate across multiple disciplines and see something within a vision of a future New Zealand, while delivering his thinking with humility and clarity.
We deeply appreciate his long standing commitment to nature, our identity as peoples “not in narrow seas” and our collective future.
