One of the ways they've found around this is to encourage local businesses to become involved in conservation by sponsoring the planting of native species. The trust initiated a team-building opportunity for businesses that expressed an interest in environmental issues, in which the business would purchase plants and pay their employees to volunteer for a half-day planting plants in a reserve. This way the business strengthened the teamwork among their employees in a constructive and recreational way that benefits the area's biodiversity. A beneficial side-effect of these kind of activities is that these employees gain a better understanding of the local environment, which hopefully sparks their interest in conservation efforts (and hopefully they'll start to contribute to restoration in other settings as well). By charging a considerable amount per native for the company to plant, the trust is encouraging the business to actually take care of these plants, rather than then letting them die because of neglect.
Afterwards, we got some dirt under our nails by weeding the Coalgate Reserve and freeing some of the plants that had grown too big to have combi guards. When everything was sorted out, we stopped at a nearby cafe for tea time and came to home sweet home! Here are some very official pictures and videos of us hard at work!
Interviewing the esteemed Christina Barnes about freeing plants from combi guards
Bridget Chalifour weighs in on the weeding process
We still get excited about sheep, no shame
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| Weeding around the native plants |
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| Paint Lawson like one of your french girls |
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| :) |
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| Paulita looking stunning next to an unfortunate plant that has already died because of the combi guard |
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| Bridget looking out for combi guards/Lorde |
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| Derek pulling up grass |
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| Dr. Hostetler telling a really bad joke at teatime probably
Sincerely,
His Royal Highness Niko
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