It’s been an honour: President Rowan Sprague’s Farewell Report
Category: National. Posted: 6 March 2026
Being the president has been a true honour
President Rowan Sprague’s Farewell Report to the 2025 AGM
Kia ora koutou,
After a lot of thought, I have decided that I’m not going to run again as the NZBI president. Being the president has been a true honour, but I don’t have capacity to commit to what the position and NZBI need. I won’t be going away from the NZBI - Alice McNattycan finally step back from the past president role, which I will fill to support continuity of the NZBI Executive Committee. I will also carry on my work as co-chair of the organising committee for NETS/ Australasian Weeds Conference 2026 in Christchurch.
Another role I intend to pass on is being the coordinator of the NZBI mentoring scheme. This year our mentoring scheme has 15 participants. I received really positive feedback from the participants last year, and the only tweak they recommended was providing more guidance, particularly for mentors. Therefore, at the start of the scheme this year, I provided more guidance for mentors and mentees about topics to discuss with their mentee/ mentor and how to get the most out of this programme. I think the scheme is going well so far. If you are interested in being the next mentoring scheme coordinator, please let me know!
It has been another busy year for the NZBI and the Executive Committee. We have now updated our Constitution to align with the new Incorporated Societies Act, based on the feedback received from you all at our AGM last year. We’ve also been examining our membership record keeping systems as well as our documentation storage, as both needed updating. Big thank-you to Briar Cook, our membership officer, and Duncan MacMorran, our treasurer, for their support with this work.
A lot of my time of late for the NZBI has been organising NETS/ Australasian Weeds Conference in 2026. This conference could be one of the biggest events ever held for the NZBI, as the AWC event in 2024 had over 300 attendees. The organising committee and I are working on how to combine these events so we still get the NETS experience we love.
Last year I started an NZBI ‘by the numbers’ in my President’s report, and I thought I’d do the same this year to give you an idea of what we’ve been doing these past twelve months to July 2025:
NZBI by the numbers:
- Number of members: 478
- 6 branches
- 10 Executive members, plus 3 ex-officio members
- We have one recently updated constitution which meets the new Incorporated Societies Act legislation
- We administer 10 awards:
- 4 NZBI Legacy Awards; 2 postal shoot awards; one Scholarship and one Professional Development Award; NZBI Fellowships and Life memberships
- Of these, we awarded 3 at NETS2024, as well as 2 postal shoot awards. We also awarded one scholarship and 2 Wendy Mead Professional Development Awards and one NZBI fellowship over this past year.
- Our mentoring scheme this year has 15 participants.
- Conferences:
- NETS2025 is our 74th NETS conference.
- We are actively organising a combined NETS and Australasian Weeds Conference in Christchurch in 2026.
- Communications:
- Over the last year, we put together 4 issues of Protect Magazine. We also released two press releases – our annual Biosecurity Week, and Summer Holiday messages.
I would like to offer a very sincere thank you to all the NZBI Exec members. We are a volunteer-run society, and many of our Exec members get things done for the NZBI in their own time. I would like to acknowledge their effort above and beyond to help successfully run this great society.
I would like to thank the employers of the Executive Committee for supporting us to have our meetings during work hours. The support from our employers helps immensely and also shows that they are investing in building capability and collaboration in biosecurity.
Finally, thank you to all of our NZBI members for being a part of this society, continuing to innovate and improve biosecurity outcomes, mentor and share knowledge with others in the sector.
Ngā mihi,
Rowan Sprague
President