Park volunteering

Introduction | Park care events | Corporate park care | Park care projects | Additional information | Registration

Children planting a tree (left) and volunteers introducing bird boxes to attract birdlife

Introduction

Auckland City Council recognises and values the contribution of volunteer work in our parks. Volunteers help create a vibrant, attractive and ecologically rich network of parks by assisting with tasks such as tree planting, litter removal, animal pest control and monitoring, rose pruning, mulching, plant care, bush track maintenance, plant propagation, seed collection and wildlife surveying.

• Get involved - register as a park volunteer
• The role of park volunteers
• Park volunteer success

Get involved - register as a park volunteer

Individual and community group registration

Auckland City Council supports registered community groups and individuals with voluntary work, and keeps a record of the work completed. Please register if you or your community group wish to help out in the council's parks and reserves.

Corporate registration

Auckland City Council organises annual one-off corporate park care activities.

Long-term involvement is managed by Conservation Volunteer New Zealand on behalf of the council. Conservation Volunteers New Zealand specialise in supervising corporate groups, and preparing a calendar of activities for them - see Corporate park care for more information.

The role of park volunteers

Auckland City Council encourages local people to care for their local parks. The more people who care for our parks, the more attractive and diverse our parks will be for people and wildlife.

For volunteers to successfully contribute to our parks, it is important to understand the role of volunteers in parks. The council does not permit volunteers to undertake work that would normally be completed by paid contractors. Rather, volunteers carry out tasks outside the scope of contract work (eg intensive animal pest control in natural bush areas). Because contractors and volunteers work in parks, it is important to inform the council about any proposed work. This will reduce the chance of damage caused by contractors to volunteer work sites (eg weedeating newly planted trees), and ensure the work complies with the council's health and safety policies and procedures. The table below provides a guide to the type of voluntary work permitted in our parks.

Park volunteer success

In 2005 to 2006 volunteers contributed to tree planting, animal pest control, rubbish clean-ups, mulching, weeding and maintenance of walking tracks in Auckland parks and reserves.

Volunteers on the creek and coast clean-up programme spent 190 hours collecting 2.2 tonnes of inorganic rubbish at 6 locations across the city.

A growing number of volunteers are participating in the animal pest control programme. Volunteers collectively removed 127 possums and 607 rats from 6 parks, almost double the total caught last year.

The winter tree planting programme saw 325 volunteers plant 6,243 native trees and shrubs in parks.

Park care groups continued to make a significant contribution to the improvement of parks. The groups completed an estimated 3,342 hours of work on 242 activities.

Overall, park volunteers contributed an estimated 4,513 hours equivalent to $157,920 of labour over the 2005 to 2006 financial year. The hours worked increased on the previous year by an estimated 1,305 largely attributed to a growth in volunteers participating in the animal pest control programme and new park care groups becoming established.

Updated May 2007