Colin Ogle (right) and Bill Fleury (rear) are recent retirees contributing their career knowledge to volunteer programmes in Whanganui such as Friends of Gordon Park, who run regular planting and weeding events.
Retirees in Whanganui are getting stuck into volunteering, with many using their decades of knowledge and skills from the very fields they recently left.
The Department of Conservation (DoC) office in Whanganui runs a regular volunteer programme, leading its own projects and helping to assign volunteers to various partner programmes.
One of the biggest demographics of volunteers is recent retirees who are giving back to the causes they have already dedicated much of their lives to.
“[Volunteers are] extremely important, because we wouldn’t get anything much done without them,” said former Whanganui DoC office employee, and now regular volunteer, Colin Ogle.
Ogle and fellow former DoC Whanganui co-worker Bill Fleury are two regular volunteers. They have received some of the most prestigious conservation awards in the country.
Ogle, a former school science teacher from Taranaki turned lifelong conservation worker and botanist, has received three of the highest conservation awards in New Zealand.
He received the New Zealand Plant Conservation Network Lifetime Achievement Award in 2010, the Loder Cup in 2004, the Allan Mere Award in 2003 and the New Zealand Coastal Restoration Trust award in 2025.
He took early retirement from salaried work in 2001, becoming a part-time consultant while offering his increased free time to various volunteer projects over the past 20 years.
“The Government can’t do it all by itself, and so owners and volunteers and various other groups can all get involved,” Ogle said.
He is chairman of Friends of Gordon Park, which began as an informal volunteer group in 2004 and became a full legal trust in 2022. He regularly leads a variety of planting, maintenance and weeding efforts at Gordon Park.
He surveyed all the lakes and reserves in the Whanganui district, making plant lists which he said were still being used. He is a former chairman of Central North Island Blue Duck Conservation Charitable Trust and a regular volunteer at Bushy Park Tarapuruhi.
“People feel they are doing something for the future” when they volunteer, Ogle said.
Fleury retired in 2020 after a 33-year career at DoC and an even longer career in conservation. Before joining DoC when it was established in 1987, he was an environmental surveyor for the New Zealand Forest Service with his wife, Dawn Fleury.
The main focus of his career was pest management and protected species support. He oversaw a range of projects, including designing aerial 1080 operations and Kaimanawa horse musters.
He was made a member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to conservation in 2022.
The Fleurys are now regulars at volunteer efforts across Whanganui, including Gordon Park.
“There isn’t the resources within the official capacity to manage these places as they should be managed,” Fleury said.
As DoC was forced to prioritise projects across the country because of tight budgets, some places fell off the list for funding, Fleury said.
“If the community wants to keep these places and keep them in a good condition and keep them as a valuable asset to the areas that we live in, then the community’s got to step up and put something into it.”
Not all volunteers in Whanganui are necessarily as closely tied to conservation as Ogle and Fleury, but they contribute in different ways from their unique backgrounds.
“Our volunteers are typically kind-hearted and really well-meaning individuals that want to be making a difference for the environment,” said DoC Whanganui community senior ranger Katy Newton.
Newton has been in charge of the volunteer programme for the past several years, helping to assign volunteers based on organisations’ needs and each volunteer’s unique skills.
“If someone had some cool idea or a skill, then if they came to me, then I would ... try and connect them in as best we could,” she said.
Newton gave the example of photographers or arborists who, though their careers were not necessarily in conservation, were incredibly valuable.
“There’s always more work to do than resources and people that we have to do it. So all contributions that people make to conservation are so important.”
Newton said many of the individuals who contacted her were recently retired, fit and passionate about the environment and conservation, looking at volunteering as a way to change their focus while staying active in their community.
“It’s also an opportunity to be learning new skills and to be also having that social connection,” she said.
“You’re just chatting with like-minded people, getting some exercise and then doing something really meaningful.”
It was rewarding for both parties because volunteers had the opportunity for unique experiences, such as speed boat trips into remote parts of Whanganui National Park, while DoC was able to carry out more, otherwise impossible, projects, and draw from a diverse depth of knowledge across its volunteer base.
“Yes, you’re volunteering your time, but then you’re also getting not a monetary reward, but a reward of an experience,” Newton said.
Recent retirees were consistent volunteers, mostly because of their generally more flexible schedules and desire to remain active, she said.
However, Fleury said there were also some limitations with a mainly older volunteer force.
“It’s a lot less easy to scramble around in the bush doing things like weed control,” he said.
“It would be great to have some younger, fitter, more active people.”
Newton said although volunteer numbers had remained stable in recent years, volunteer opportunities had diversified, including the involvement of schools and business groups.
More information about volunteer opportunities is available on DoC’s Whanganui volunteer page at doc.govt.nz.
“It’s a huge task looking after 30% of New Zealand,” Newton said.