Kay Holder

In 1983 Kay became the first female ranger in Arthur's Pass National Park. In 1997 Kay joined the Christchurch City Council Parks Department.

Obituary by Will Harvie. First appeared in The Press, 24 August 2024

Kay Holder has been remembered as a trailblazing ranger, committed environmentalist, and skilled horsewoman. Holder was the first female ranger in Arthur’s Pass National Park and spent 27 years as a ranger and parks manager at the Christchurch City Council.

“Kay was a hell of an environmentalist,” her long-time partner, Col Pearson, said. She wanted to “give nature a chance, which was one of the themes of her life”.

She loved horses and rode on the Port Hills above her family home in Heathcote several times a week.

She died in June, aged 65, in the Horotane Valley while training her latest horse.

Kay Michelle Holder was born on February 1, 1959, in Thames to Paddy and Lou Holder and moved with her family to Glen Eden in West Auckland as a preschooler.

In her early teens, two experiences shaped her life. Across the road was a horse paddock and Holder developed a passion for horseriding that was beyond her parents’ experience.

She was told: If you want to ride, you have to get a job. So she did, almost the next day.

The second was a ski trip to Ruapehu. When it came time to return to Auckland, she did not want to go back to the big smoke.

“That's where her other great love – the outdoors – started,” Pearson said.

Holder completed a one-year horticulture diploma at Lincoln College (now Lincoln University) in 1978 and returned to Lincoln for a four-year diploma in parks and recreation.

While there, in the spring of 1981, she met Pearson and they became a couple.

Holder wanted to commute from their home in Greenpark to the Lincoln campus on her horse, so dug out a long-forgotten rule that the agricultural college, founded in 1878, had to provide horse grazing if requested.

The college eventually complied. On July 3, 1983, she became a Department of Conservation (DOC) ranger [sic - Lands and Survey Ranger at the time] at Arthur’s Pass. It was the start of a long connection to the area and the family eventually bought and upgraded a bach at Bealey Spur.

In 1986, daughter Amelia was born but lived only a few hours. Holder grieved in part by climbing on her horse at Arthur’s Pass and trekking as far as the Nelson Lakes – 165km as the crow flies – and then back.

When she got pregnant again later, a man at DOC said she couldn’t possibly be a ranger and a mother. She replied: “Well, you’ve got children and you're a ranger. So how does that work?”

She took her case high into DOC’s administration and won.

She “wasn’t averse to putting blokes in their place occasionally”, said Ian Blackmore, one of the chief rangers she worked under at the park.

In 1997, Holder took up a job as the CCC at CCC – coastal care co-ordinator at the Christchurch City Council. It was a community-based conservation initiative that restored degraded coastal dunes.

It was quite a different ecosystem from Arthur’s Pass, but “similar principles” applied, son Ezra Holder said.

About 1998, she was promoted to a desk job at the civic headquarters in town. Her title and role changed as restructures came and went. Her last title was manager of regional parks. She served under five mayors.

“She created an environment where you wanted to succeed for her,“ acting manager of regional parks Paul Devlin said. “Her unwavering commitment to the community and environment was contagious.”

She was instrumental in securing Lottery funds for initial facilities at Christchurch’s Travis Wetland.

About 20 years ago, she won Ministry of Education funding to provide environmental education to schools. Over 16,000 people participate each year, a fine legacy, Devlin said.

More recently, she got Jobs for Nature money from the government as part of the Covid response. It was used in part to make 10 people into rangers.

“Kay understood the difference between management and leadership,” Devlin said. “She knew at times we needed to ‘do the right thing’ rather than ‘doing things right’ and she had the wisdom to know the difference.”

She was a “genuine public servant”, her son said.

When her children were more independent, Holder renewed her love for horses and mounted numerous “missions” with friends through the Southern Alps that typically lasted two or three nights.

“We did some bloody good trips,” Pearson said.

Holder did not like hot drinks – tea or coffee – but to get access to high country farms with her horses, she was “known to have a cuppa” with farmers when seeking permission to cross their land.

She took up competitive endurance racing and trail riding, disciplines in which the welfare of the horse is paramount. Endurance races can be 160km long. Trail riding is more relaxed and a race is typically 40km.

“She was hugely capable with horses,” Pearson said. “I don't think she'd had much training... she was self taught, is my take on it.”

She liked to travel and got to many treasured ecological sites, including Mangere Island in the Chathams, Maud Island in the Marlborough Sounds, Little Barrier Island off Auckland, the Poor Knights off Northland, and Antarctica.

She was a “seeker of wild places”, daughter Renée Pearson said.