ABOUT ME

Kia Ora! My name is Anne-Sophie Pagé, but to some I am more affectionately known as Annie. My roots stem back to the Otago Peninsula in New Zealand - a special place where it is not uncommon to find penguins taking up residence under your house or a sealion sunbathing in the middle of the road. My parents are the reason why I knew how to tell the gender of a crab before I could tie my shoelaces or lead a full scale shark dissection before learning how to make a dinner. Thanks to them, the ocean has formed the foundation of my identity.

Fast forward to now, there are two priorities in my life. The first is to foster emotional connections between individuals and our environment in the hope of developing a holistic sense of kaitiakitanga (guardianship) amongst us all in the face of climate change. The second is to use my knowledge as a veterinarian and soon to be wildlife pathologist to mitigate the biodiversity crisis; to see our islands and surrounding ocean return to their once wild status. Having worked with wildlife for the majority of my life, including the magnificent royal albatross and some of the rarest species of penguins and sealions on Earth, I have witnessed firsthand some of the devastating anthropogenic impacts currently being imposed on our precious wild spaces.

In recent years, I have been fortunate enough to sail through the Pacific with a team of revolutionary scientists monitoring the state of our oceans in conjunction with the Sir Peter Blake Trust and Tara Ocean Foundation. I have sat amongst world leaders and voiced my concerns at the APEC Summit in Vietnam and at the United Nations in New York, camped out in the African bush dehorning rhino in an effort to combat the poaching crisis and researched penguin population dynamics in remote Patagonia.  

I have sat on the New Zealand UNESCO Youth Reference Panel and served a three-year term on the New Zealand Conservation Board. I also lived in Lutruwita Tasmania for two years and helped establish the Tasmanian Wildlife Hospital. I am a current board member of the Kaikoūra Wildlife Hospital Trust and am the veterinary advisor for the New Zealand Sealion Trust. Most recently, I have worked as a sub-contracter veterinarian for the Department of Conservation in New Zealand’s Sub-Antarctic Islands conducting mortality assessments on the critically endangered New Zealand sealion along with seasonal guiding work in the region with Heritage Expeditions. Outside of this I am completing a three-year residency in wildlife pathology at Massey University which will enable me to conduct wide scale health assessments of declining populations and influence management changes.

This website is a written and visual account of my environmental experiences, projects and adventures. It is a window into what happens when humans channel a whole ecosystem’s productive energy into themselves. It is an attempt at acknowledging my green angst…