Fremantle Bushland Volunteer Groups Issue Urgent Call for Increased City Staff Support
Community volunteer organizations dedicated to preserving natural bushland in Fremantle's southern suburbs have issued a stark appeal for additional on-ground assistance from local authorities. The Cantonment Hill, Booyeembar Park, Samson Park, Clontarf Hill, and North Fremantle Friends Of groups convened a critical meeting last month to address shared challenges, prominently highlighting what they perceive as insufficient support from the City of Fremantle.
Staffing Crisis in Natural Areas Management
These groups are urgently requesting the city to bolster its workforce responsible for maintaining more than 70 parks and natural reserves across the municipality. At a council meeting on February 25, Josephine Clarke, a volunteer with Friends of Cantonment Hill, revealed that these areas collectively span over 1,000 hectares yet are managed by just one permanent staff member on the ground.
"While there is another position available, the turnover is perpetual, usually due to better pay and conditions offered elsewhere," Clarke stated. "We have no issue with our existing wonderful staff. They do an amazing job with limited resources over many different environments, but there is a heavy reliance on external contractors who do not have the specialist knowledge or the vested interest to care about our bushland and who often come in and do work that creates damage."
Volunteer Efforts and Growing Challenges
Clarke emphasized the city's significant benefit from volunteer labor in these natural zones. Last year alone, volunteers planted more than 13,000 plants, conducted weeding, collected rubbish, educated schoolchildren and community groups, lobbied for support, and applied for grants. However, she warned that these efforts are increasingly strained.
"We can only do this with support of natural areas staff, and our volunteer groups are ageing and we're dealing with the effects of climate change," Clarke explained. "Our natural areas deserve better." The groups are advocating for increased in-house natural areas staffing to ensure proper oversight, management, and conservation, which they argue are vital to Fremantle's distinctive character and aesthetic appeal.
City Response and Future Reviews
In response, City CEO Glen Dougall acknowledged that the municipality is continuously evaluating its resource allocation. "We are actually undertaking service reviews at the moment, which council will get to look at later on in the year," he said. Dougall questioned whether wages and conditions are universally better elsewhere, contributing to staff departures, but conceded recruitment difficulties.
"Sometimes it is hard to find people who are looking for work in a local government," he noted. "So we need to do better at promoting ourselves in that." Mayor Ben Lawver praised the Friends Of groups for their "tremendous" work, expressing gratitude for their contributions and those of other volunteer organizations across Fremantle.
The situation underscores a broader tension between volunteer-driven conservation efforts and municipal resource constraints, with climate change and an aging volunteer base adding urgency to the call for enhanced staffing solutions.
