Caroline Rain
Invercargill City Council
Manager – Parks and Recreation
SPEAKER BIO
Caroline has been with Invercargill City Council for nearly 3 years. In her role as Manager – Parks and Recreation Caroline supports and oversees the planning, performance and operational teams, including staff safety and wellness. Relationships and partnerships are also an important part of her role with Mana whenua, Sports and Recreation Trusts and Organisations.
With a career spanning over 20 years in leadership roles, Caroline’s goal is to provide learning and growth that inspires positive change. Caroline has a passion for providing and enabling safe and fun facilities, spaces and places for the community – Mō tātou, Mā tātou/ for the people, by the people.
Outside of work, Caroline enjoys adjudicating or participating in dog agility, spending time at the pool or gymnastics to support her children and generally enjoying time with her husband, three children and five dogs. Caroline is also a Board Member for Otatara School.
TALK TITLE
Trees are our Taonga – A Tatou Rākao: Invercargill’s approach to a better management of their tree network
ABSTRACT
Invercargill City Council (ICC) looks after some of our most important natural assets, with more than 6,000 street trees across the City and trees located in approximately 3,000 hectares across our parks and cemeteries.
Prior to ICC’s Tree Plan being developed, there was very little documented about our tree network, with maintenance and forward planning being reactive. A tree falling on cars parked in a public car park was the trigger for some urgent planning to ensure the team were confident this would not happen again or, if it did, a process was in place to ensure effective and efficient actions were undertaken.
Understanding the City’s tree network is essential for planning ongoing maintenance, and planning for future tree diversity and development.
With an ageing tree network (with many in a state of deterioration), increasing environmental challenges, and financial constraints, it is important that our trees are managed proactively and in the best way possible into the future.
Our long term priority is to have an appealing, sustainable network of diverse tree species and tree maturity to deliver high quality public spaces and aesthetically pleasing neighbourhoods.
The ICC Tree Plan 2020 Our Trees – A Tatou Rākau plays a key part in achieving all of this!
A tree network that inspires the vision of Tane!
He whatunga rakau e whakaaweoho ana i te tirohanga a Tane!
Connectivity to earth, sky and everything surrounding them.
Te hono ki te whenua, te rangi me nga mea katoa e karapoti ana ia ratou.
A Tatou Rākau is our one stop shop, as it brings together our vision, inventory, policy guidance and action plan into one cohesive story.