Volunteers
Celebrating New Forest volunteers – a beating heart in the National Park
Chris and Helen
The New Forest is the ‘obvious place’ to visit and volunteer for Chris and Helen, who live on the National Park’s border and, between them, have offered their time for more than a decade.
‘Volunteering is important because we know we can give something back. We know the footpaths are going to be maintained and various habitats are going to be at their optimum, or working towards optimum, so the biodiversity is as good as it can be.
‘It’s important to the Forest to help maintain the habitats, that’s the thing. If there’s no grazing on this sort of habitat then gorse will take over and you won’t be able to access it at all because you won’t be able to get through it. The wildlife will really suffer.
‘Volunteering is good fun and it’s very sociable. We get to meet lots of new friends and make friends. It keeps you fit, and mentally, it’s good for you to get out to meet new people, different people. It can broaden your horizons.
‘Different people come [to sessions] so you get to meet the same people, but in a rotation almost – you can catch up on what they’re doing and find out what’s happening in their neck of the woods.
‘We volunteer at different sites, so we’ve done wetland habitat restoration, archaeology to help maintain earthworks and barrows, and clearing paths to improve access by re-routing streams, taking down trees that are overhanging, all that sort of stuff.’
Diane and Martin
The New Forest was once a holiday destination for Diane and Martin, who now live nearby and help shape the landscape they would once visit. Volunteering in the Forest, they say, has helped shape them in return.
‘Volunteering has given us so much. We feel good when we’re in the Forest, and if we’re feeling a bit flat, this is where we come. It’s good for us to enjoy and for everybody else to enjoy.
‘Volunteering is an easy thing for us to do. It adds something to our lives – it enhances them. For us, as much as anything else, and because we’re retired now, it helps our own mental wellbeing.
‘We couldn’t just sit and do nothing – we’d be out walking or doing something. Volunteering is an ideal way to get out for some fresh air, exercise, and to do some good. It’s a feel good thing for us. I think we get out just as much as we put in.
‘When you get to a session and you look around, you see the number of volunteers and the amount of work being done. It’s not the kind of work that could be done without volunteers, other than at a cost.
‘We saw volunteering as an ideal way to give something back to the Forest to allow future generations to enjoy it.
‘We do footpath surveying now and just about anything to help enhance and maintain what we’ve already got here. We’ve been trained up with brush cutters and hedge trimmers.
‘We’ve done access surveys, hedge planting, clearing invasive species, restoring heathland. We’ve also done a bit or archaeological work with bracken cutting. Everywhere there’s a chance to do something, we’ve had a go.
‘Thinking back to when we started in Bransgore where we used to camp and now where we work sometimes, seeing the heather reappear is delightful. It’s beautiful because the birds are coming back and the bees are there.’
