About 30 people attended a meeting at the Tomo Eatery and Bar on Wednesday night and 20 put down their names to assist NZ Land Search and Rescue (Landsar).

Some will train as Lansar members, while others will join search teams as expert guides familiar with specific areas.

Those gathered included hunters, land owners on the fringes of Pureora Forest, amateur radio operators and others with an interest in the outdoors.

More, including those from the coast and Taumarunui, are likely to get involved in coming days and weeks, said meeting organiser Allen Juno.

Juno got involved after his property was used as a base to look for an experienced Auckland hiker, Judy Donovan, 79, who went missing in the Pureora Forest on March 23.

Donovan had been with a party of three people from the Pukekohe Tramping Club who had been assisting Department of Conservation staff by laying bait in a remote area of the northern forest. The search failed to find her.

Concerns about how the search was conducted were initially raised in the King Country News by Donovan’s daughter Nic who wrote to the newspaper to thank those who helped. She also said she was concerned that protocols around searching – including recent restrictions around shift times, could impact on the potential for success.

At the end of the first day searchers were apparently ready to go back to look for Donovan with a dog, but by about 8pm the police radio person had finished an eight-hour shift.  They could not pass the radio to someone else and so the searchers were stood down until around 9am next day.  

“That first night was really the issue for a lot of us,” Juno said.

“Even though looking for somebody in the bush in the dark is dangerous and has its own issues, we had an experienced hunter, who knew the area well, who was prepared to walk in. He believed he could have been at the area where Judy was last reported to be within one and a half hours.  I know I can only speculate but because of the extreme cold it seems Judy would not have survived long into the following day.

“The problem is that police couldn’t ask anyone to have gone in because of their health and safety regulations. Even in the subsequent days there was minimal communication with the local experienced bush people and pig hunters who knew the area well, having hunted there for years. Many of these had heard of the search and were keen to help.”

He said the weather was “about as bad as it gets up there”, the volunteers who had been laying bait were ill prepared and not every member was carrying a locator beacon.

“But all that said, one thing we have urged the authorities to take on board, and they appear to have done so, is to utilise the knowledge of local hunters and bushmen and women, who really know these areas,” Juno said.

“Nobody can say for sure, but if people who regularly hunted in the area in which Judy went missing had been allowed into the search area at an earlier stage, it would have represented her best chance of survival.”

The search continued in following days until it was abandoned on March 31.