When George Hadler’s colleagues farewell the Department of Conservation area manager on Friday, it will mark the end of his 44-year involvement with the Department of Conservation and the New Zealand Forest Service. Sources: Stuff, Timaru Herald
Restructuring has provided the impetus for Hadler to call it a day; what the future will hold he’s not sure, but he’s not quite ready to hit the retirement button yet.
“I have always said to myself, after 45 years of what I do, [that] before I retire it would be nice to try something else.”
It has been a long and varied career path from the day a young George Hadler, from Amberley in North Canterbury, decided against becoming an apprentice wool classer and, in 1969, took up a role instead with the New Zealand Forest Service.
There were two strands to the Forest Service: Environmental and production forestry.
Hadler began in the production side of it, spending two years at Golden Downs Forest in Nelson and a third year at Hanmer Forest. He moved to the environmental forestry arm in 1974, but retained an interest in the production side.
“A portion of production was logging, and I did logging as a trainee and got involved with a little bit of logging at Hanmer in the early days. And after being in environmental forestry for a short period I went back to Ashley Forest in 1976, after the big wind of 1975, and helped with that for three years, and really enjoyed that.”
Hadler’s work with the Forest Service saw him travel around the country, taking on different roles as he moved from one place to the next.
After the Ashley Forest stint, he returned to native forests with a role in the Catlins.
Everything changed in 1987, when DOC was born out of the ashes of the Forest Service, Lands and Survey Department, the Wildlife Service and the national parks portion of Internal Affairs.
Hadler saw a position as a senior conservation officer in Timaru advertised, and transferred from Pirongia to Timaru in late 1987. He’s been here ever since, apart from another restructure that saw DOC move out of its leased Timaru premises and centralise its operation – including a small base at Peel Forest – to its Geraldine headquarters.
The territory he’s been responsible for covers the area from the Waitaki to the Rakaia River, up to Mt Dobson in the south, and in the north as far inland as the top of the Southern Alps.
The office work could have taken over, but Hadler says he has always tried to get out in the field.
“I’d like to think that I’d been achieving at least eight to 16 hours a month, and our structure suggests that managers like myself should be trying to do that. It’s not always the case, but that’s what we were attempting.”
Hadler feels he and his staff have worked hard to keep the public informed about what they have been doing.
“I think, for a Government department, we have done quite well in being able to keep a little bit of a profile about what we are here to do and what we are achieving.”
There have been relationships to foster with local iwi (both Arowhenua and Waihao), run holders through the tenure review process, and schools, through the Enviro Schools project.
“A lot of good feedback comes back to us through that, not just from the kids but also from their parents.”
A lot of DOC work is operational, and some of it potentially dangerous.
“Health and safety has been a big focus for me, and managers nationwide, and it’s still a huge focus. We’ve got people out there climbing in and out of helicopters, using chainsaws, walking around mountains doing stuff.”
The role has required a balance between bureaucracy and on-the-ground work.
“In an organisation like ours, there are key responsibilities and there are also things that need to continue to happen; in a central government organisation, we need to report certain things every month, every year. That all needs to happen.
“And then there’s fitting the things that you want to do, the cool things, around that.”
