In the third instalment of our ‘People of Te Araroa’ series, we have a cuppa with wildlife defender, web and graphic designer, back-country route-creator, photographer, and all-round TA stalwart Anthony Behrens. Anthony and his partner Fiona Burleigh are possibly best known in the TA community for two things: first, the replica DOC hut Fiona built to shelter hikers in their Palmerston North backyard, just a few hundred metres off trail. And second, their deep, hands-on commitment to saving one of our most endangered and beautiful native birds, the whio (blue duck).
Anthony and Fiona are modest about it, but their twin passion projects — a hut and a duck — have combined to perfectly embody something special at the very heart of Te Araroa.
More on that “Te Araroa secret sauce” a little later.
The spark for both Anthony and Fiona’s parallel hobbies — hosting Te Araroa walkers and conservation — was their youngest child reaching that magical age where she no longer needed a babysitter.
“We said yahoo, and headed for the hills,” Anthony smiles.
One of the first things they noticed when they got back into the bush was all the predator traps.
“We thought, what are those?”
That probably mirrors the experience of many Te Araroa hikers, who soon realise that Aotearoa’s seemingly pristine wilderness is actually under relentless attack.
Intrigued, the couple studied up on how crucial predator trapping is for environmental renewal, and got inspired.
At the same time, they became aware Te Araroa was about to be launched, passing about 10 minutes’ walk from their house.
“So our journey with Te Araroa is almost directly parallel to our journey with conservation.”
Perhaps not coincidentally, that house is almost exactly at the 3,000 km trail’s midpoint.
At its heart, one might say.
The week before the trail opened, the couple decided to walk the section between Feilding and Palmerston North.
“It kind of blew our minds because it was so different to tramping. In a lot of ways, it felt freer than tramping.”
Anthony admits that’s a strange thing to say, given the reputation that section has for not being particularly idyllic.
“But for us it was just eye-opening that you could walk in a place you weren’t, in a lot of ways, supposed to walk – like, along the side of a busy road, or under planes just about to land, or threading through blackberry. And actually, that weird type of walking could be fun.”
Over the next couple of years they began meeting hikers and inviting them to stay.
By then they had begun volunteering as trappers in the nearby Ruahine Range, as part of the fight to save one of New Zealand’s rarest, loveliest native birds, the whio (blue duck).
“If a walker’s visit coincided with a weekend trap run, we would take them with us on quite big expeditions. I remember we, ah, we broke one,” he laughs.
Broken hikers notwithstanding, Te Araroa and conservation were a natural combination.
“The walkers really liked it. It was probably the first experience, for most of them, of real, full-on, wilderness mountains. Because they hadn’t been into the Tararua yet, let alone the South Island.”
Not only that, but hikers also relished taking down introduced critters that, for their part, relish native birds.
New Zealand’s native species are extremely vulnerable to the likes of stoats, rats, weasels, ferrets, and other recent invaders, by having evolved over millennia with zero exposure to predators (the country’s only native, land-based mammal being two species of bat).
Anthony says by the time they get to Palmerston North hikers are well aware of these facts and jump at the chance to help.
“It really lights something up in people.”
Two strands come together
Around that time the couple made two pivotal decisions.
First, they got into long-distance hiking themselves in a big way, first walking the South Island section of Te Araroa, then pioneering a new route up the wildest part of the North Island — dubbed the Spine of the Fish.
Next, Fiona designed and built the tribute DOC hut in their garden as a way of giving the increasing number of Te Araroa hikers they were hosting – and themselves – some space.
Straightaway, the two developments complemented each other.
“It just seemed to make a lot of sense that the koha [donation] from the hut would go to our whio protection project, because TA people just got it.”
Why did they go for a conservation project in the Ruahine Range, rather than in the Tararua — the equally magnificent forest park on their doorstep?
“Because we were tramping in the Ruahine at the time, and there were whio in there – they were wiped out in the Tararua a long time ago. And whio are a rare bird.
“And there were stoats in there, which are really good at killing whio, and we’d never seen a stoat before, either. It just really captured our imagination.”
It opened them up to “pretty amazing” experiences they otherwise never would have had.
“You know, we fly around the mountains in helicopters, we do hut work, all this stuff we never, ever would’ve done if we’d been running a conservation project in the city. And you get to help save an animal, and you don’t need any qualification. It’s really cool.”
A lot like Te Araroa, Anthony says.
“Te Araroa is also this crazy, weird, big, huge thing, that you can just do. You don’t need a qualification; you just do it. It’s kind of liberating.”
The replica DOC hut, with its nifty, hand-crafted details such as the proper “rescue orange” paint job, a real DOC intentions book, orange triangles leading to it from the Manawatū River, and quirky signs done in DOC style, brought the two things together.
“The hut just starts conversations – even if we can’t take hikers out with us on a trapping trip, we will talk to them about it. And often when they get to our place, they’ll say, oh we saw whio, say on the 42nd Traverse Track near Tongariro or on the Whanganui River.”
They will also have read the trail notes, seen Whiowhio Hut mentioned and probably looked at Anthony and Fiona’s website.
“So they already understand what we do, and they’re kind of excited about it as they come towards us. It’s pretty neat.”
There was another reason the couple chose the whio cause.
“It’s a rare bird that people can see quite easily. You don’t easily see a kiwi, or a kōkako. But hikers can see a whio. A similar bird they can see, but not until the South Island, is the kea. A rare bird, a special bird. And we get to introduce them to the idea of that, and also to the idea that actually, things aren’t as fantastic as they probably appear in the New Zealand outdoors.”
As an example, he relates taking a Dutch hiker trapping in the mountains.
“And she just started yelling out, it’s so beautiful to be in nature! And I looked around and all I could see was, kind of, devastation. You know, we were standing on a mountain, and the environment was ravaged by deer, hares, possums, and weeds. She was just beside herself with joy, and all I could see were the things that were wrong.”
Anthony hastens to add that Aotearoa’s wilderness is still amazing, despite the “degradation”.
“We can see the potential, we can see what it was, and we can try to do something about it.”
Part of that is telling the story of how big the job is, and the hut is instrumental in that.
“If you look at how large the country is, there’s no way we can trap our way out of the environmental problems we have. I think people who walk Te Araroa can understand that because they understand scale.”
Meeting people who care
Despite the hugeness of the task, Anthony and Fiona hold onto hope. While whio disappeared from the Tararua in the 1970s, the couple believe they could be helped to return.
“We can see that birds could spread from the Ruahine down to the Tararua. About five years ago, one did. If we can get more birds to survive, they will probably end up in the Tararua. And that would be a place where they could feasibly survive and have babies.”
And it’s not like Anthony and Fiona haven’t made a dent in the ranks of the “nasty critters” that eat whio and other wildlife.
“We’ve pulled out four and a half thousand animals. We’ve got about 200 traps. It’s pretty amazing what you can do if you think hard about it, and we can see the difference it makes”.
We tell Anthony it seems admirable that the funds raised from Whiowhio Hut don’t go to Te Araroa, despite the scale of its track maintenance and other needs, but instead to whio protection. That there’s a proper altruism to that. He smiles.
“I think people do want to give back. A lot of people do care.”
A notable example is Te Araroa hiker Florian (Flo) Astor from Mainz in Germany.
“He was probably the ultimate version of wanting to give back. He really got it,” says Anthony.
“He walked away, put two and two together, and came up with $4,500. It was just outstanding.”
That’s the amount Flo raised for the Ruahine Whio Protectors, Anthony and Fiona’s trapping project.
“I think it’s a great story to counter the idea many Kiwis have about Te Araroa hikers – that they are all take and no give.”
Flo wrote to Anthony in an email that all he did was turn a birthday into a shared hike in the Austrian mountains, and that shared hike into support for whio protection.
“It didn’t feel like a big statement.
“It just felt like a natural extension of what the mountains — in Austria or in New Zealand — tend to teach you: good things happen when you move through landscapes with respect, curiosity, and a bit of humility.”
Flo’s story, in his own words, follows in full below.
Meanwhile, Anthony and Fiona carry on, hosting hikers and trapping predators. So far, they have hosted around 1,000 walkers since opening the hut in 2017, with the 2025-2026 season being their biggest yet, at 160.
On top of all that, the couple both spent several years as trustees on the Manawatū-Whanganui Te Araroa Trust, which coordinates the trail in the region.
They’ve since stepped out of those roles. It was rewarding, but it was time to let someone else have a go, Anthony says.
“The current Trust is so good. They don’t need me.”
Anthony has also rebuilt Te Araroa’s website and still maintains it.
The true heart of Te Araroa
And that special something we mentioned at the start, which is summed up by the beautiful alchemy that has arisen in Palmerston North between shelter for Te Araroa hikers, and protection for whio?
A couple of years ago, Anthony told Te Araroa chief executive Matt Claridge how all the koha from Whiowhio Hut goes straight into saving whio.
“I remember his eyes lighting up.”
We ask Matt what that was about. He grins.
“I’d credit that chat with being the starting point of Whakahou.”
Whakahou is a te reo Māori (Māori language) word meaning renewal, regeneration, revitalisation.
It’s the name given to Te Araroa’s philosophy and strategy of ensuring the trail gives back to the land and communities it crosses, and to the generations to come.
“It’s about giving more than you take, and that Te Araroa can contribute, always, to making everything a little bit better,” Matt says.
“It’s never just about the track. It’s about people, culture, the environment.”
Matt says he was thinking about the need for Te Araroa to evolve into a regenerative trail at the time he had that chat to Anthony.
“You know how the penny drops? I thought, that’s what Anthony and Fiona do – they give more than they take, and everyone benefits.
“Hikers get looked after in the hut, and a better experience on that part of the trail. The koha they give in return benefits not only the whio, but nature, the trail corridor, the people that live nearby, everybody.”
“It creates community and shows the benefit of Te Araroa not just for the trail or the people on it.”
Matt’s colleague Fiona Naismith, Te Araroa’s partnerships and project manager, said Whakahou to her is about hikers wanting the life-changing effects of walking the trail to flow beyond themselves.
“What we hear from walkers is that Te Araroa is often a personal journey of regeneration.
“Our aspiration is that as an organisation, we are on a similar journey to ensure that the trail enhances, strengthens, and regenerates the incredible landscapes, biodiversity, and communities it passes through.
“The land, wildlife, nature, and people the trail touches are the greatest strength of Te Araroa. It’s our responsibility to continue working to nourish them.”
Flo’s story
The whole thing started with a slightly unreasonable birthday idea. For my 40th, I invited friends to a remote mountain hut in the Austrian Alps — wooden bunk beds, shared dorms, very limited comfort, and absolutely no mobile reception. No road, no shortcuts, no “I’ll just drive up later.”
Everyone had to hike in. There were two routes: one fairly relaxed, one longer, steeper, and more scenic. People naturally spread out according to ambition, fitness, and questionable decision-making. In the end, nearly 70 people showed up.
We spent the weekend hiking, cooking together, sleeping in bunk beds, and doing a long ridgeline crossing that was just demanding enough to make everyone question my sanity — and then thank me for it afterwards.
People arrived tired, left even more tired, but somehow lighter and happier.
Instead of presents, I asked people to donate to the Ruahine Whio Conservation Project. Not because it was my birthday, but because it felt like the right thing to do in that setting.
After hiking for hours, sharing food, sore legs, and a few beers in a hut with no distractions, the idea of supporting something tangible and meaningful landed surprisingly easily.
The money wasn’t disappearing into a vague cause — it was going to real people, in a real place, doing very real work. That made it simple, and it made it honest.
New Zealand has a very special place in my heart. During my Te Araroa hike, the country gave me far more than just incredible landscapes — it gave me trust, kindness, and a feeling of being deeply welcome, even as a stranger passing through.
From trail angels to spontaneous conversations, from remote huts to small towns, I experienced a generosity that stays with you long after the blisters are gone.
Supporting conservation in Aotearoa feels like a small but meaningful way of saying thank you for all of that. My connection to whio began in a quiet, almost accidental moment: spotting two of them near Blue Lake during the TA.
They’re understated, resilient, and perfectly adapted to their place — and once you see them and meet the people who dedicate so much of their lives to protecting them, it’s hard not to care deeply.
Hiking has a way of putting things into perspective. It slows you down, removes noise, and makes effort visible. You earn places, conversations, and sometimes even ideas. Turning a birthday into a shared hike, and a shared hike into support for a conservation project on the other side of the world, didn’t feel like a big statement.
It just felt like a natural extension of what the mountains — in Austria or in New Zealand — tend to teach you: good things happen when you move through landscapes with respect, curiosity, and a bit of humility.
Find out more:
Te Araroa’s Whakahou-Regenerative strategy
FAQs about registering for Te Araroa’s 2026-2027 walking season (registrations open June 1)
Stay at Anthony and Fiona’s Whiowhio Hut
