Dr Olivier (Olly) Ball

Olly is a Senior Ecologist with several years of consultancy experience and a broader background spanning research and lecturing. He works across freshwater, wetland, and terrestrial environments, undertaking ecological assessments, monitoring, and technical reporting for a range of clients.

Olly’s experience includes long-term environmental monitoring programmes associated with wastewater discharges and water abstraction schemes across Northland. His technical experience includes wetland vegetation assessments, stream habitat assessments, Macroinvertebrate Community Index (MCI) sampling, water quality monitoring, freshwater fish surveys and bird monitoring. He has also assessed ecological values within High Conservation Value (HCV) areas in Northland forestry estates. He has undertaken numerous lizard and terrestrial invertebrate salvage and translocation projects across Northland, including machine-assisted lizard salvage operations.

In addition to consultancy, Olly has 25 years of experience as an ecology lecturer at NorthTec and 10 years as a research scientist with AgResearch, where he specialised in insect pasture pest ecology and the biological control of pasture pests. He also has a strong research background in aquatic and terrestrial invertebrate ecology and taxonomy. Current research interests include the description of new landhopper species and a comprehensive revision of New Zealand’s landhopper and sandhopper taxonomy.

Olly also undertakes technical and peer review of ecological reports and scientific publications, assessing methodology, interpretation, and conclusions against regulatory requirements, scientific evidence, and current best practice.