McDonald's Lime Volunteers - Making a difference in our community
Ruakuri Reserve
Wednesday, 8 February 2012
Making a difference in our community
Staff at McDonald’s Lime believe actions speak louder than words. The company had been looking for an environmental project to engender team spirit and to show its commitment to supporting the local community.
“We originally looked at a Pureora project but it was a little too big to start with, so in consultation with DOC Te Kuiti, we chose the Ruakuri Reserve,” says Duncan Clarke (Agricultural Lime Sales). “We wanted to make a difference, with an overriding belief in making the world a better place. As our General Manager John Reeves said, ‘you can talk all day, but let’s just get on and do it!’ So we did.”
The ongoing project involves laying out poison to control rats and possum numbers so the wildlife in the 114 hectare unenclosed reserve can survive, and other native species can be safely released in the future. “There is currently a small enclosure with the large native weta inside. The idea is to get them breeding then the baby wetas can escape into the reserve,” says Duncan. “With the poisoning of the rats, the odds of survival for the wetas will increase dramatically and the hope is to establish a new colony of this unique New Zealand creature.”
It takes six McDonald’s Lime staff about seven hours to fully complete the poison run, baiting about 130 bait stations at two monthly intervals. The staff also monitor 60 tracking sites between these baiting times. “The monitor sites run parallel to the bait runs and involve us putting out special ink impregnated paper. When a rat or a stoat runs across this it leaves tracks, so the DOC staff can then decipher the threshold of pests in the reserve.” Duncan says they hope to get ten possum traps to use over the winter and put further pressure on the pest. Staff donate their own time to the Reserve project and then enjoy lunch at the now famous HuHu Café in the Waitomo Village when each morning’s work is completed.
Duncan says McDonald’s, established in 1968 to form a new lime burning operation for the Glenbrook steel plant, enjoys a great profile in an area that involves limestone in its raw state. “We can now take our customers to Ruakuri Reserve and hopefully involve them in coming along with us to help conserve the place. We have staff who are descendants of the Waitomo iwi and it is really great to have them involved and gain local knowledge about the area from them.”
Ruakuri Reserve
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