John Thorpe Holloway was a New Zealand alpine explorer and forest ecologist.
Background
He was born in Oxford, North Canterbury, New Zealand on 15 November 1914. Along with his mother and father, John Thorpe Holloway grew up in rural New Zealand until 1916. His father then became one of the top lecturers of Botany at the University of Otago.
After he graduated from the Waitaki Boys’ High School in Oamaru he went on to further his schooling at the University of Otago, like his father before him.
Education
Holloway graduated in 1937 with a Master of Science degree and honors in Botany and Chemistry.
Career
His family moved for several years until finally they settled down in the town of Dunedin. John, or Jack as he was known, spent most of his childhood attending a boarding school in Dunedin. As a small boy, he enjoyed climbing.
By the 1930s, John Thorpe Holloway was an established mountaineer.
He explored many places, but two of the most known explorations he led were on the Barrier and Olivine ranges. Over the course of eight years Holloway made over fifty new accents on the Olivine and Barrier Ranges, including discovering twelve new passes, and he produced detailed maps.
Number one before Holloway had made maps of these mountain ranges. Once Holloway had mapped these new lands, exploration in New Zealand was changed.
Holloway led many explorations during what were called the "depression years." He would often trade maps that he had made for food rations in order to survive.
Shortly after marrying Una Scott Stevenson, a lab technician, Holloway returned to New Zealand. Holloway lived in New Zealand for two weeks before joining the 11th Forest Company, Corps of New Zealand Engineers. Soon after he moved to the outskirts of London where he worked for four years in the sawmills.
However, when Holloway was not working in the sawmills, he started a census of the woodlands that he was exposed to
In 1945, he joined the Holloway began to work on the National Forest Survey. Holloway studied the forests of New Zealand and their native wildlife.
These observational studies led to many of the papers that Holloway wrote in his life, including "Forests and Climates in South New Zealand."
One of the more prominent studies completed by John Thorpe Holloway was his study of deer species in Southland, New Zealand. In this study, Holloway observed the impact of deer species on the Southland environment.
Holloway not only noticed that the species just east of Southland were thriving, but the species in Southland were nearly diminished.
He proposed that this change could be due to the "virgin environment." Holloway studied the Long Wood Range"s deer population the most thoroughly. He found that the environment"s deer population was the lowest in Southland due to newly operating sawmills and deforestation. Holloway believed heavily in the preservation of the natural world.
After many studies Holloway stated that in order for society to thrive, then it must first think about its surroundings.
Membership
Holloway became a member of the New Zealand Alpine Club.