WILDCARE Cradle Mountain Volunteers

Meet Ryan and Zoie - volunteers who both enjoy nature and love travelling around Tasmania exploring wild places.  As well as studying for a Masters in IT, Ryan is an enthusiastic landscape photographer and Zoie works on a flower farm. They recently participated in a 'Clean-up' day with Wildcare Cradle Mountain Volunteers and reflect on their experience:

"There are several reasons why we are so attracted to the Wildcare volunteering event. First, we love the natural environment in Tasmania and we want to contribute ourselves to preserving the pristine environment. Second, we would like to engage ourselves more in the local community. We believe volunteering is one of the best ways to make friends and experience the local culture. Finally, it is fun to be volunteers! Volunteering gives us happiness and makes our visit to national parks more meaningful as well. We really enjoy the cleanup day in Cradle Mountain. We started cleaning from the visitor centre by walking along both sides of the highway and cleaning up any rubbish we could spot. In the end, I think we had covered more than 10km of the road. We were surprised by how much we can achieve in just two hours! With all the volunteers' effort, we collected a full ute of rubbish, which were mainly soft drink cans, water bottles, cigarettes, broken car parts, plastic packages etc. I was thinking; without the cleaning event, how long would the rubbish stay in the national park's area? It makes us reflect on how much our waste would affect the natural environment. I believe that not only should we take away our own waste, but also we should avoid using one-off plastic products. It was also nice that the national park rangers participated in the event. We really enjoy working and chatting with them, because they could share with us what is happening in the national park. After the cleaning event, there was a barbecue lunch. We had a great time chatting with other volunteers and enjoyed the food provided by Cradle Mountain Hotel :) Overall we had a really great time and we will definitely join any upcoming volunteering events in the future!"