01/07/2026
A third of New Zealand is public conservation land. National parks, marine reserves, backcountry huts, the tracks we walk, the rivers we swim in, the birds we hear at dawn. Most of us know we love these places. Very few of us know what it actually takes to protect them. The politics, the compromises, the years it takes to build a single national park when the community doesn’t want one, the death threats that come with aerial poison operations, the diplomacy required to protect an entire continent.
Lou Sanson spent fifty years doing this work. His first job was cutting tracks through South Westland. His last was running the Department of Conservation as Director-General, responsible for all of it, over 8 million hectares. In between, he led Antarctica New Zealand, made over fifty trips to the ice, built Rakiura National Park, helped establish Predator Free 2050, doubled DOC’s budget and changed how New Zealanders saw conservation. It all started at thirteen when he walked into a backcountry hut, saw two guys with the keys to the forestry cabin and hot bread and baked beans, and thought: that’s what I want to be when I grow up.
This is one of the most important conversations I’ve had on this podcast. Not just because of the scale of what Lou has done, but because of what he’s learned about life along the way. About playing the long game when the opposition is fierce and the result might not come during your tenure. About influence coming from relationships, not authority, built at dinner tables, not in boardrooms. And about something much simpler: finding one ten-out-of-ten moment every single day. A sunset. A bike ride down the gorge. The Southern Alps going pink while your 96-year-old mother raves about it beside you.
At a time when the Conservation Amendment Bill is making all of us think about what we want for these places, this feels like essential listening.
Part One: How to Build a Life Around What Makes You Feel Alive with Lou Sanson is out now, wherever you get your podcasts.
