Council Staff

North Canterbury Staff

Find out about the North Canterbury Fish and Game team.

Chief Executive

Rasmus Gabrielsson

Rasmus joined North Canterbury Fish and Game from the Cawthron Institute in Nelson in November 2019. Rasmus has a wildlife management and salmonid fishery research, management and consulting background, with postgraduate degrees from the University of Otago. Rasmus is a passionate hunter and angler who brings to the organisation a wealth of fisheries research and management knowledge and scientific rigour. Rasmus came to New Zealand from Sweden, where he had been an officer in the Swedish Army; after a period of study in New Zealand, he joined Otago Fish & Game in Central Otago as a Field Officer, then joined the Cawthron Institute four years later.

Fish & Game Officers
Harry Graham-Samson

Harry has joined North Canterbury Fish and Game since the beginning of 2022; he had previously come from his family business which was doing environmental restoration work along streambanks and around wetlands in Canterbury. Growing up not far from Lake Ellesmere, he has spent a lot of time either night fishing the rivers or hunting ducks in a howling southerly. He now also spends a lot of time in the backcountry, either hunting or fly fishing, and he has also spent time overseas fly fishing a variety of rivers, so he has seen how different fisheries work.

Emily Craig

Richard Cosgrove

Environmental Officer

Lyndon Slater

Lyndon joined North Canterbury Fish & Game from a period of time in the private sector in a business development role focusing on contract acquisition and contractor management. 

After studying Ecology at Lincoln university Lyndon has worked with the Department of Conservation in a range of roles, from field-based species and ecosystem monitoring to managing complex landscape-scale species recovery and pest control operations.

Lyndon brings significant relationship, and stakeholder management experience to the role loves the challenge of building strong and enduring professional networks and loves being part of a high-performing team.

Lyndon is passionate about the outdoors and the recreational opportunities it affords us and spends his spare time exploring and hunting the back blocks with his partner (wife by the end of the year) and dogs.

After spending the bulk of his life on the West Coast of the South Island, Lyndon has made North Canterbury home (the rain got the better of me).   

Office Manager

Debbie Ambler

Debbie owned her own business for ten years prior to joining the team in April 2012 and has brought to the organisation a wide variety and extensive range of administrative skills. She is usually the first person you meet when you walk into the Fish & Game office.

Debbie's role covers everything from managing staff and Council meetings and the region's accounts to coordination of local licence agents and licence sales and health and safety - along with helping out staff in general.

Outside work, you'll find Debbie either at the gym, on a golf course, or on a mountain bike (though not as serious a rider as her husband!). She also enjoys a good book to wind down.