Our team | Restore Native

Meet our team

Adam Thompson - Founder

Adam's love of growing things started as a young boy in his parent's market garden. His family have a history of Farming, Horticulture and Viticulture so growing things is in his blood.

He first started growing natives as a 25 year old and has expanded every year and continues to grow with Restore Native.

As a Cambridge Farmer and with a finance background Adam is motivated to find great, cost effective solutions for native trees on farms.

Adam also personally established the Te Miro Kiwi Project, bringing local landowners and volunteers together to help return kiwi to the Te Miro bush.

Recognition

Restore Native founder Adam was a finalist in the 2022 Zanda McDonald Award
and won the Kaitiakitanga Guardianship and Conservation Award at the 2023 Primary Industries
New Zealand Awards.

Restore Native was named a Sustainability finalist in the 2024 Waikato Business Awards and a Community Contribution finalist in 2026. These acknowledgements reflect the work of our team and the landowners, organisations and communities we work alongside.

Explore our work opportunities →

Ants Blackmoore
Nursery Operations Manager

Ants joined Restore Native in 2025, after spending his early career in trades before swapping out into project management and running operations in other businesses. Now, Ants is following his passion for the outdoors, joining Restore Native to get back to what he loves: working the land. He enjoys getting out and building relationships with landowners, helping turn big plans into plants in the ground.

Whether it's coordinating a project or pulling on the gumboots himself, Ants brings the kind of experience that keeps things running smoothly — and a genuine love of the outdoors that makes it all worthwhile.

James Ranstead
Site Operations Manager

James joined our team in 2022 and is responsible for all of our site work and overseeing our team in the field. He’s also a trained ecologist who's passionate about getting out and making a real practical difference to the environment.

You'll find yourself dealing with James as he plans and prepares planning projects and maintenance and spraying.

James is a keen footballer and spends his weekends playing all over the Waikato.

Hannah Buchanan
Nursery/Site Operations Lead

Hannah joined Restore Native in 2021, swapping the classroom for the great outdoors and never looking back. She looks after everything in the nursery — from collecting and germinating seed through to leading the team and trialling best-practice growing techniques.

Tom Brown
Senior Team Lead

Tom is our awesome Site Foreman and all-round doer. You’ll often find him on-site running planting projects, doing spraying or site prep and keeping everything running smoothly with James and Pete.

Off the clock, he’s a keen mountain biker at Te Miro and Rotorua—and just as handy with a chainsaw. Oh, and he's also famous for one thing you can’t miss: wearing sunnies at all hours, day or night!

Flynn Drysdale-Dunn
Senior Team Lead

Pete Bichan
Senior Team Lead

Hailing from the forestry industry, Pete is known for his steady hand — whether it’s dispatch, health and safety, or just good life advice. Around here he’s the unofficial Team Dad — and a bit of a legend.

Despite the jokes about his “nearly a pensioner” status, he’s easily the fittest of us all. Outside of work, you’ll find him caving, volunteering with Search & Rescue or tackling some of New Zealand’s toughest cycling routes

Roy Keith Gorr "John"
Team Lead

Roy spends summers in agricultural contracting and winters with Restore Native, where he’s an integral part of our planting and dispatch crew, bringing a good old-fashioned work ethic and values. If you see him on site, it'll likely be with his head down, getting stuck in.

Recently, he and his partner welcomed a baby, making him a proud new member of our “Dad Club.”

Thomas Corin
Team Lead

Thomas joined us in 2024 as our youngest full-time team member, bringing practical skills and engineering experience to the crew. He enjoys the hands-on, wholesome nature of restoration as well as being part of his local Te Miro community.

He’s also recently joined our “Dad Club,” with a new baby at home keeping him busy off-site too.

Blake Anderson
Team Lead

Blake brings a background in dairy farming to his role as Team Lead at Restore Native. That experience gave him a real appreciation for practical, on-farm solutions — and an understanding of what farmers need to make a project work for them.

Blake leads from the front, working closely with landowners to deliver the best outcomes, and is just as likely to be out planting alongside the team as he is coordinating the job. It's that hands-on, practical approach that keeps things running smoothly from start to finish.

Sébastian Lemercier
Field Operations

Seb is our resident Frenchman who traded hospitality for native restoration. These days he splits his time between the nursery and the field and is well known for his attention to detail and commitment to quality.

He’s also a dad to two teenagers and still enjoys mixing a cocktail or two at our Friday pizza nights!

Vanessa Van de ven
Field Operations

Vanessa is a dairy farmer on the Hauraki Plains, where she lives with her husband Bart and their two school-aged daughters.

She joined the Restore Native crew in 2022 and has become a senior member of our winter planting team, consistently bringing dedication and care to every project and delivering great results for our clients.

Emily Corin
Nursery & Field Operations

Emily joined our team in 2023 and is an absolute hive of energy and font of plant knowledge.

Out on-site she’s all go, delivering planting projects with pace and enthusiasm while keeping the team in good spirits with her upbeat vibe.

Awesome older sister to Thomas (being a hard worker runs in the family!)