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Web Diva:  Narena Olliver

Narena Olliver

Truth

That thee is sent, receyve in buxumnesse;
The wrastling for this world axeth a fal.
Her is non hoom, her nis but wildernesse:
Forth, pilgrim, forth! Forth, beste, out of they stal!
Know they contree, look up, thank God of al;
Hold the heye wey, and lat thy gost thee lede;
And trouthe thee shal delivere, it is no drede.

— Geoffrey Chaucer

Narena Olliver

who started developing this web site on New Zealand's birds in 1998, is neither an ornithologist nor a scientist but a writer with an intense interest in natural history. She has written a natural history/environment column for two Bay of Plenty newspapers, the Bay of “Plenty Times” and the “Opotiki News” and has also written the occasional article for the “New Zealand Herald” and “Stuff”. Narena's career has been varied, ranging from writing to teaching English, cattle breeding, magazine publishing and politics. She was for six years a district councillor and Chair of Planning Hearings for the Opotiki District Council as well as a member of the East Coast/Hawkes Bay Conservation Board. She has also been a member of the NZ National Council of Women's environment standing committee and was a member of the Ornithological Society of New Zealand. She now lives in Greytown, her home town. Narena has a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and Classical Greek and a Masters degree in Teaching English as a Second Language from the University of Illinois in the United States where she lived for ten years. She also lived in the United Kingdom for five years. She is a New Zealander by birth, her ancestry being English, Irish, Scottish and Italian. Her ancestors on both the paternal and maternal side settled in New Zealand in the 1860s. Since 2004, Jaclyn Kras and Dick Bos have done an enormous amount of work in reorganising and upgrading this web site. A special thanks is due to Dick who, while living in the Netherlands, initiated the changes.

This web site receives no government, taxpayer funding.

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