Volunteer legend - Dick Simmers

Dick Simmers, keeping an eye out over Caversham reserve.

Retired farmer, Dick Simmers, has been a volunteer legend for City Sanctuary since 2022. Dick has a wealth of field volunteering experience from far and wide. He’s worked in wildlife parks in South Africa, done trapping in Fiordland national park, cut tracks in the Silverpeaks and he’s even made an enclosure for Sirocco the kākāpō! Some volunteer work at Boulder Beach is what got Dick started with trapping in Dunedin, and then he connected with City Sanctuary to start looking after reserves in his local area. We visited Dick to talk trapping while he’s been off duty, resting an injured hip.   

 Dick has been a volunteer in the Caversham reserve area, which is a protected habitat for both peripatus (native velvet worms) and skinks. In his time as a volunteer here, he’s had an impressive number of catches and recorded 95 possums, 14 mice and 6 hedgehogs. One of the highlights of this work has been the noticeable changes in predator numbers over time 

He says, “I got 29 possums in the first year and in the last 6 months, I only got 5 or 6.” Setting up rope lines to help him access some of the harder to reach areas within the reserve and using apple as an additional lure at the tree bases where the possum traps are set have been some of his top tips for helping to remove predators from the area. All this hard work has really paid off with an increase in korimako (bellbirds) and piwakawaka (fantails) moving into the area over the last year. Dick’s been able to enjoy seeing these changes from his lounge window which overlooks the reserve. Thanks for all your wonderful work and for the great yarn, Dick! Wishing you a full recovery so you can enjoy being in the outdoors again soon!