Neville Peat

Neville Douglas Peat (born 29 November 1947) is a New Zealand author and photographer, based at Broad Bay on the Otago Peninsula. He specialises in topics about natural history, notably that of southern New Zealand and New Zealand's subantarctic islands. He has written over 40 titles since the late 1970s and has been writing full-time since 1986.

Biography
Peat was born in Dunedin on 29 November 1947, the son of Ernie Peat and Jessie Peat (née Ayson). His heritage is Scottish, described as a fifth-generation descendant of Scottish pioneers in Otago.

Peat was an elected member of the Otago Regional Council from 1998 to 2007, and was its deputy chairperson from 2004 to 2007. He stood down in 2007 to take up the Creative New Zealand Michael King Writers' Fellowship, during which he completed a comprehensive book on the Tasman Sea, The Tasman: Biography of an Ocean. In 2013, Peat was elected to the Dunedin City Council, and served one term before standing down in 2016.

In 2004, Peat was behind moves to create an official flag for Otago. This culminated in a competition run through the auspices of the Otago Daily Times newspaper and Otago Polytechnic School of Art towards the end of that year.

Honours and awards
In 1994, Peat was named Dunedin Citizen of the Year, because of his books on the region and establishing the Dunedin Environmental Business Network. In 1996, he and co-author Brian Patrick won the Montana New Zealand Book Awards for the book Wild Dunedin. Peat was awarded the Creative New Zealand Michael King Writers' Fellowship, New Zealand's largest literary award, in 2007. In 2016, he received the CLNZ Writers' Award for his project The Invading Sea.

In the 2018 New Year Honours, Peat was appointed a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to conservation.