Ruud Kleinpaste

Rudolf Hendrik Kleinpaste (born 23 April 1952), generally known as Ruud Kleinpaste, is a New Zealand naturalist and host of the Animal Planet series Buggin' with Ruud.

Biography Born in Jakarta, Indonesia, on 23 April 1952, Kleinpaste was educated in The Netherlands, and then studied plant sciences at Wageningen University, eventually earning a degree in silviculture. At the age of 20, he became interested in entomology.

After immigrating to New Zealand in 1978, he worked in various environmental jobs before settling down to 14 years in the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries (MAF). In 1987 he started a talkback radio show (Ruud's Awakening) in which he offers environmentally friendly horticultural tips to gardeners. He retired from MAF in the middle 1990s for a career as an ecological consultant. This line of work has led to television work inside and outside New Zealand,