Kaikōura kaitiaki Gina Solomon honoured for services to conservation

Sunday, 6 June 2021

Gina Solomon has been recognised in the 2021 Queen's Birthday honours for services to conservation and governance.

Kaikōura woman Gina Solomon has been recognised for her work protecting the ocean, land and creatures of her coastal home.

Gina Solomon helps Lynton Downs School pupil George Graham plant a new wetland funded by Kaikōura Water Zone.

She has been made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for her services to conservation and governance, applying her “kaitiaki lens” for more than a dozen groups and agencies over two decades.

Solomon said she was in disbelief upon receiving the letter, thinking it was some kind of hoax.

“The kindness that people have shown to put that together, it just blew me away,” Solomon said.

Raewyn and Gina Solomon on Mt Fyffe overlooking Kaikōura. They grew up south of the peninsula, at Oaro.

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The order of merit had been a very happy event during a difficult time in her life. Her “beautiful, fit and healthy” son Cory-Blue McGregor died from a ruptured brain aneurysm in October, aged 32.

“I’m still on that grief journey. The last six months have been a bit of a blur,” Solomon said.

Gina Solomon, left, and sister Raewyn Solomon at the Foreshore and Seabed hikoi in Wellington, in 2004.

“So I’ve felt every emotion about this, and I feel really humbled but also sad, because I know my son would have been incredibly proud, and he’s not physically here to share it with.”

Gina Solomon, left, with her mother Darcia Solomon, joining the Nelson/Marlborough Conservation Board.

Solomon had since made the hard decision to resign from some of her conservation groups, to spend more time on her own wellbeing.

Gina Solomon and Brett Cowan bless Huttons Shearwater chicks arriving at new burrows behind a predator-proof fence.

“Over the years there's been times where I think I’ve had about 17 committees going on at the same time.

The Duke of Sussex and Gina Solomon hongi, as the Duchess watches on, during the dedication of 20 hectares of native bush to the Queen's Commonwealth Canopy project at The North Shore Riding Club in Auckland, in 2018.

“I’m on a different journey at the moment, I have good days and bad days as the healing happens. But I am planning more voluntary work in the Kaikōura community.”

Gina Solomon and then-MP Te Ururoa Flavell at Takahanga Marae to celebrate Mark Solomon's knighthood in 2013.

Solomon, of Ngāi Tahu and iwi from Te Tauihu, grew up with her grandfather Rangi Solomon living next door and her uncle Bill Solomon on the other side.

Bill founded Whale Watch Kaikōura, and Rangi chaired both the Kaikōura tribal committee and the Ngāi Tahu trust board prior to treaty settlement. The Solomon family also had a lot of involvement in fundraising and building Takahanga Marae, which opened on the historic pā site in 1992 after decades of work by the community.

Her father John Solomon was a crayfisher, and often went fishing with his father. Solomon recalled eels, flounder, whitebait, pāua and crayfish often on the dinner table.

“So we were taught from a very early age how to catch kai, and best practices; how we should only take enough to eat that day, to protect the population. There had to be kai there for the next day, and the day after, and for our kids, and for their kids. That’s how my family has lived for generations, and that was just our way of life,” Solomon said.

After high school, Solomon moved to Wellington to do secretarial courses, before working in various government agencies. When she returned to Kaikōura, she became rūnanga secretary, working alongside some family members over about 15 years in the role.

Eventually she followed her mother Darcia onto the Nelson Marlborough Conservation Board, having “tagged along” to conservation hui over her mother’s 13-year tenure.

“My parents were always political about the environment. My father would help my mother with her papers, read over it and talk to her about it, and he gave her confidence. And then she gave me confidence. That’s the really lovely thing, it’s been passed down through the generations.”

Solomon was a founding member of Te Korowai o Te Tai ō Marokura, which led the creation of Kaikōura (Te Tai o Marokura) Marine Management Act 2014, a piece of legislation protecting the unique coastline, establishing marine reserves and sanctuaries, and creating the advisory committee Kaikōura Marine Guardians.

“The work is really for our great-great-great grandchildren, we need to leave this place better than we found it,” Solomon said.

“Our coastal strategy is just carrying on our fathers’ and grandfathers’ work … And I’ve had a lot of people behind me, supporting me, they enable me to show up and do the mahi, you need that.

“That’s why I feel I don't really deserve this alone – I’m a product of how I was brought up, and this recognition is for all of us, really.”

Solomon’s work over the years included ministerial appointments to the QEII National Trust Board, the Nature Heritage Fund, the Molesworth Steering Committee, and the Forestry Ministerial Advisory Group.

She also worked in environmental risk management, the Hutton’s Shearwater Charitable Trust, native generation in South Bay with St Paul’s, the Canterbury Water Management Strategy’s water zone committee, and the Kaikōura Plains Recovery Project.