Geoff Harrow

Geoffrey Harrow (20 December 1926 – 16 January 2023) was a New Zealand amateur ornithologist and mountaineer. On 21 February 1965, Harrow rediscovered nesting grounds of the threatened Hutton's shearwater (Puffinus huttoni) or Kaikōura tītī, at in the Seaward Kaikōura mountains. He devoted the following 50 years to helping save the species from extinction.

Early life and family Born on 20 December 1926, Harrow was the youngest child of Edward John and Rachel Harrow. Harrow spent his early years in Ashburton, later in Christchurch, and spent hours studying birds. Growing up in the Great Depression, he had the most comprehensive collection of birds' eggs of anyone at Riccarton School.

Mountaineer Harrow developed a passion for tramping and climbing from the age of 14, after meeting members of the Canterbury Mountaineering Club on a visit to Arthur's Pass. He had cycled from Christchurch. He was one of the few to have climbed all the peaks in New Zealand, and climbed every peak in the Aoraki / Mount Cook National Park within four years. He achieved a number of first ascents. He was also a founding member of the Craigieburn Ski Club, where he met his wife Lyndsey in 1955. Harrow became engaged to Lyndsey Alston in 1956, and the couple married the following year.

Hugh Logan, a mountaineer and former head of the Department of Conservation and the New Zealand Antarctic Programme, spoke of Harrow's skill and stamina as a mountaineer, and of his "explosion onto the climbing and mountaineering scene", paying tribute to Harrow's climbing and mountaineering skill as a teen, climbing Mt Armstrong (2,110m) at the head of the Waimakariri River in Arthur's Pass in about 1946. The New Zealand bird photographer and author M. F. Soper had told Harrow he knew of no seabird that nested at such height and the former director of the then National Museum, Robert Falla, wrote that up to 1965 "every accessible islet and stack from Banks Peninsula to Cook Strait had been examined by field parties with no result". However, with encouragement from Soper, Harrow returned to Kaikōura to follow up on the lead obtained from Hislop.

Harrow became determined to find the birds, and drawing on his considerable skills as a tramper and mountaineer, he climbed into difficult mountainous country, finding three carcasses An artificial colony for the birds, Te Rae o Atiu, was established by the Trust on Kaikōura Peninsula in 2005, with translocations of about 10 young birds. By 2024, the population had reached about 100.

Later life Harrow climbed Mount Kilimanjaro in Kenya aged 72, and skied into his 90s. To his family, Harrow was "the all-or nothing man, black and white", his daughter Belinda said. "He was either totally and utterly boots and all into something, or not at all and like that about everything, a driven, self-confessed obsessive. He was an optimist, a do-it-yourselfer and an enthusiastic booster of others."