Despite the challenges faced during the COVID pandemic, Hawkesbury's landcare and bushcare volunteers continued to rally for the local environment.
A Greater Sydney Local Land Services survey has found that volunteer groups contributed more than 2,510 hours of environmental service during the 2019-20 financial year.
Co-ordinator for the service Madeleine Florin said that the work tallied to around $104,000 worth of conservation efforts to protect and restore the area's natural environment.
"The Hawkesbury is home to 16 groups compromising of more than 150 regular and casual volunteers carrying out activities including bush regeneration, tree planting, community education and advocacy work," she said.
"Local groups are coordinated by the Hawkesbury-Nepean Landcare Network who have been working with the Hawkesbury Environment Network to assess the health of 30 wetlands in the area.
"This project will provide great insight for landcare and local landholders on how to best protect and restore wetlands."
Ms Florin said that the recent data shows that nearly 1000 groups were engaged in bushcare or landcare activities, with 8850 regular volunteers and 4700 one-off volunteers contributing more than 150,000 hours of service across the greater Sydney region.
"This equates to an incredible $6.3 million in in-kind labour costs which is a truly remarkable achievement given the lockdown and impact of COVID-19 in 2020 which we estimate reduced the total number of volunteer work by about 50,000," she said.
"Over-all, the number of active volunteers increased by 13 percent compared to the last survey in 2017/18 and there was a 20 per cent increase in hours contributed."
Ms Florin said that volunteers were crucial to the protection and maintenance of the natural environment.
"They are very much the unsung heroes of our natural environment, working quietly behind the scenes purely for the love and passion for what they do," she said.
Greater Sydney Local Land Services provided $220,814 to landcare and bushcare groups over the financial year, supporting them to continue restoration and maintenance work.
Funding was provided to groups via the NSW Landcare Program, the NSW Environment Trust Every Bit Counts Program, Catchment Action NSW and the National Landcare Program.
