In her natural habitat

Why Forest & Bird boss Nicola Toki has paired with comedian Pax Assadi on a new series about the country's most endangered species

- RUSSELL BROWN

Nicola Toki has more range than most of us. On Newshub Nation recently, she was sitting opposite a former government minister and persuasively calling out the farming sector for its "refusal to engage in the rules that the rest of us have to" on climate emissions. This week, she launches a TV show with one of the country's best known comedians. But it all makes sense in the context of a life of advocacy for nature.

The show, Endangered Species Aotearoa, teams her with Pax Assadi to get out, find and film some of the country's most threatened species. The format he's the gormless city boy and she's the enthusiastic expert is adapted from a Finnish show, Most Endangered Species, and like that series, comes with the endorsement of the World Wildlife Fund.

When Warner Bros contacted her to talk about the programme more than two years ago, she was the Department of Conservation's director of operations for the eastern South Island and its threatened-species ambassador. She happily made suggestions on what it could include - without clicking at first that the company actually wanted her to present it.

Not long after it got the green light, she became the chief executive of Forest & Bird. "And so, I had to do it all in my spare time, which I don't have much of," says Toki.