6 Jul 2016

Robbie Hewson is a Park Ranger for the Regional Parks team at the Christchurch City Council. He's based in the Port Hills.

Tell us a little bit about your job?

My main role is looking after the front country areas of the Port Hills reserves like Halswell Quarry, Victoria Park and Summit Road areas.  I'm responsible for the maintenance of those areas as well as the project and community focused work that goes on. As park Rangers were lucky to be able to plan our work and see it right through to the end phase and often take on a lot of the actual field work ourselves. It’s a really varied role where as well as our core work in the parks were often involved in education programmes,  working with volunteers or out fighting a fire as part of the rural fire team.

What do you love about your job?

The thing I most love about my job is running community planting days at Halswell Quarry where we hold days through the winter to get people involved in planting native plants in the conservation area of the park. We have had some really successful plantings in the past three years and I'm lucky that I have been able to link up with some great local people who are willing to lend a hand. I love native plants and it’s a bonus to be able to teach people a bit about them.

Tell us something about your job that most people don't know

I think a lot of people don’t know that the City Council has a park ranger service looking after places like the Port Hills and coastal areas of the region. I guess a lot of people go out to explore our parks and reserves after work and at the weekend so they don’t get to see us. We're like ninjas!  It's cool when we get to work with school or community groups to tell them about what it is we do. We have a great team of people who are super passionate about looking after our natural environment and getting people outdoors!

What's the best thing about living in Christchurch

The best thing about living in Christchurch is being close to both the mountains and the sea, Scarborough when there's a wave, and hard frosts at the Quarry followed by a fine day.