Sandy’s first experience of translocation was a leopard caught in the garden of her childhood home on the outskirts of Nairobi, Kenya. She moved to the UK in her teens and had to abandon her ambition to research zebra. Robin’s childhood adventures centred on cycling and the Brighton Youth Orchestra. They met at the University of York where they did ecology degrees and roamed North Yorkshire as Conservation Volunteers. They lived in a rainforest in Malaysia collecting data for Robin’s PhD. Sandy went on to work for the UK statutory nature conservation agency, while Robin reinvented himself as an ecotoxicologist. Seventeen years later they moved to Aotearoa. Within weeks they joined the Remutaka Conservation Trust and became accredited kiwi handlers during the translocation of kiwi-nui. In 2010 they moved to Motueka, attracted by the mountains, a more sustainable lifestyle and a strawbale house. They work as ecological contractors and volunteers with Friends of Flora.