The river corridor is probably the largest area of managed retreat in an urban centre worldwide. How can our experience inform processes of managed retreat elsewhere? The question is central to this project, which has developed a model of ‘retreat’, ‘relocation’ and ‘re-imagining’. Re-imagining asks how can the land be re-used for projects that further lower environmental and social risks.
Sarah Mankelow
Sarah Mankelow, Red Zone Community Partnerships Ranger, Christchurch City Council
Sarah is the Community Partnerships Ranger in the city council’s red zone ranger team, a post she has had for about three years. She has a background in conservation and community
engagement, having started her career in visitor centres with the Department of Conservation (DOC). She later moving into city council work, coordinating volunteer networks for native
planting and ecological restoration. In her red zone role, she manages relationships with people and communities and is responsible for the transitional lease process.
How did you become involved in red zone work?
Kia ora koutou ko Sarah toku ingoa. I am a Community Partnerships Ranger in the red zone team in the council’s Parks Unit. I became involved in the red zone work originally on secondment to fill in for a staff member who had moved on. Initially I did a six-month secondment with the team, then when the job came up, I applied to take it on permanently. it was a good opportunity to dive deeper into the sort of community work and ecological restoration I’d been doing in the city centre. I'd been previously in a role supporting active citizenship through native planting for about five years with council, and this gave me an opportunity to combine the learnings from that role into something that was on the ground as well as policy-driven. It had a bit of everything, it was an exciting place to be in.
Courtney Reid was the first community partnerships ranger when they were building the team. She took a secondment in a planning team and I just stepped into her role temporarily. We're quite good within council if someone takes leave, providing it as an opportunity for somebody else to extend their skills. Then she decided to leave her role and I applied to get the job permanently. It was still quite a new role and a new team. I had a bit of a learning curve with working out how to process lease applications for transitional use within the red zone.
I came in at a point where people were still quite tentative to enter the red zone. It was still a little bit hands-off. The fencing that LINZ [Land Information New Zealand] had put in didn't really allow for the roaming access that we have now.
One of the first things I did over that summer was to use my previous connections to create a few small-scale community events to invite people back into the space. Working with the libraries' team, we ran a number of summertime library events where families could come in and engage with the space. We had the library van with environmental engagement events alongside. We did things like pollination games, bringing plants so people could pot them up and take them home, hut-building, mostly activities aimed at younger age groups. Things encouraging exploration, and thinking about the space in a different way, but not heavily resource driven.
Canterbury Museum engagement team and the library van
I had a lot of families that turned up to those events saying ‘Oh, this is the first time we've been back’. It really highlighted to me how small-scale, ground-roots, community-driven events can help broach a return to the red zone and overcome some of the feelings that people had about these spaces. We had them in different places: one at Dallington Landing, one at Brooker Avenue [in Burwood], and places where we knew people would come and that we could identify because it's quite hard to navigate through the red zone. The idea was to bring people back or just encourage them to come and visit, really. A lot of people turned up. This was all in the six months of secondment, when I was temporary, three years ago.
How have you developed your role?
I guess the Community Partnership Ranger is all about relationships. One of the big things for me was to connect with all the people that are currently using the spaces or engaged with the spaces in some way and making sure that I've got good relationships with them. Groups like the Richmond Community Garden, the Avon Forest Park people. A lot of them are extremely self reliant, but there's still opportunities to support. A big part of that was getting those relationships into a state where they feel like they can come and ask for help if they need it or to be an entry point into council which can sometimes be quite daunting.
I think I've always been a connector of people to place all through my career at DOC. My first permanent role in conservation was the visitors’ centre person, behind the counter. People come and ask for information, and you send them out into the world. I guess it's just part of who I am. It's really important to be open and honest with people. And I have got quite an honest way of communicating. So if there's something hard that needs to be said, I'm not going to beat around the bush. But I am also a true government employee, so I can be neutral if I need to be.
Bike jumps
The red zone of course doesn’t have a visitor centre so we need to know how to find people. Sometimes it's obvious because we know who the players are, and we've got the records of who the transitional leaseholders are. Then we can go to places like the Richmond Community Garden and the Climate Action Campus and physically meet them. Other times it can be a little harder. For example, we had some behaviour issues, like kids building bike tracks and digging holes that the mowers were finding and damaging some of the trees. What I did then was put a sign out saying, hey guys, if you want to be building tracks, can we come and talk to you or be on site at this time, on this day? Can you turn up and let's talk?
Other times it can be through other organizations like the residents’ associations because they have their own networks. Sometimes it's just finding who the key connectors are within a community, making contact with them, and then by word of mouth. And once you've been in a space for a long time, people figure out who you are, or they find out through others. I think having the role that I'd had previously, where I was supporting volunteering across the city, gave me a huge advantage because I already had that strong network of people working in the community for conservation. The power of the network: I have a lot of strings that I can pull!
What sorts of issues do you deal with on a day by day, week by week basis?
One of the things that I have found is that it is a unique space, and while it's a park and it's looked after park staff, it doesn't feel like a park yet. It's getting there, but people might not necessarily have the same respect as they do for iconic places like Victoria Park. This is not to say that we don't have bad behavior everywhere, but I do feel that people think they can get away with more in the red zone. So we're constantly dealing with dumping of rubbish and building of bike tracks and dog owners behaving badly. Today I’m interviewing two potential interns to work with us to help with that. Homelessness is a massive issue: the red zone is so vast and has these lovely little pockets of vegetation that people can camp under, it does feel like a safe place for someone to pitch a tent for the night.
This doesn't touch me so much; it’s mostly dealt with by our operational team. I'm more dealing with the people that might get upset about those sorts of things. I work with the community to maybe change their views of things or to show them the right way to manage issues that they're having. And talking to neighbours; some of those that have stayed [around the red zone] have a strong sense of ownership of some of the spaces over their back fences. Sometimes that can clash with the public access of a space. Mostly we send people through the Snap Send and Solve app, but if it's a community issue, then it will come through to me. Sometimes we'll have people just starting to do projects in the red zone spaces that haven't come through the normal channels, like extending their garden out, or we'll have a community that want to do something in a red zone space and we need to reach out to neighbours and make sure that everyone's happy.
We get a lot of requests for community gardens, or inquiries from people that want to run bush kindies and things that are education- and engagement-based. Those all have very strong community benefits, so we might send them into the transitional lease process. Other times we get things that are not about community benefit, like I've just said no to a person who wants to park a trade vehicle. We have information on the website [https://ccc.govt.nz/parks-and-gardens/regenerationareas/using-regeneration-areas] about the sort of projects that we might say yes to. They can fill out a form, and then that comes to me, and I can start the conversation. When the form comes in, I start the public notification process. Or I may need more information, or a site visit if that's appropriate, to make sure that the place that they've chosen is appropriate for the activity that they're proposing.
Then it comes to public notification on our website, and if we have no issues raised through that process, and then it will go to our Head of Parks to be approved and then to leasing to write up a lease. That's the process for a transitional use that I manage. Somebody that wants to do something more permanent has been in a holding pattern waiting for co-governance. But the transitional leases can be for anything up to just under 10 years, but depending on the future of the space that they're in, leases can be for two years, five years. And then I work with leaseholders. For example, the dog neuropark in Bexley area, they've been there for probably about seven years, but we're going to have to move them out ahead of the stormwater development at some point, so I'll work with that leaseholder to find them a new space.
And what sorts of events do you run now?
I'm only one community ranger within the red zone team, but there is a large team of community rangers employed by council as they've got 1300 parks all over the city. I connect with them regularly because we obviously share interests. We're all working with volunteers that are doing similar activities like planting and community trapping, so I connect in with them reasonably regularly. Within the red zone team, I work mostly with Zane [Lazare] as the team leader to make sure that the operational side of things and the community side of things are aligned. And then for larger volunteer events, for example, I might pull in the help of the ranger team to set up and provide support on the day.
These are now mostly community planting events or maintenance events. I've got regular groups that we work with, and then if we get corporates that want to do a team day out, I can work with them to provide that. I also have a couple of schools that are doing planting within the awa corridor. They're connected through the Community Waterways Partnership Programme. I do work a lot with other education providers, supporting their engagement and education programmes as well. I've also been continuing with summertime readings. I love working with libraries, I love connecting parks and libraries. We generally run one or two summertime reading events with the library van.
The other big event that I manage is the City Nature Challenge, which is that annual bioblitz, part of the global bioblitz. I play a leading role in coordinating events for that. I think you attended our recent evening event at the Climate Action Campus. I started that particular event because it’s a really good way of encouraging people to take that closer look and explore the biodiversity that's living in the red zone in plain sight but hidden from normal view. That was my key motivation for that, and it's kind of grown. The network of scientists and educators around biodiversity has seen some amazing results and it's a bit of a flagship event for me. And again, my library
Bioblitz
colleagues have jumped on board and taken that to the next level, bringing nature into the libraries and being able to reach a whole range of other people who might then come out to the red zone and have a look for themselves.
We had over 26,000 observations this year's City Nature Challenge and revealed some special and possibly some not-so-special things. In the first bioblitz that we ran on the Climate Action Campus, we had Frank Ashwood from UC [University of Canterbury], he had just come into the country. We uncovered a green worm, which we think might have been a previously undescribed one. I'm still waiting for him to let me know, but we potentially may have uncovered an undescribed species of worm in the red zone at our first bioblitz. It just shows that things can be right under your nose. There was someone in Australia that did like a year of surveying their own backyard and revealed a huge number of previously undiscovered species.
I think with urban biodiversity everyone has a really important role to play. Make sure for example that you're planting the right species from the ecosystem that you're based in, and that will bring in the birds and insects that you want to see in your own backyard. It's a really cool way to connect people to place again. I'm obviously focused locally, but the red zone has international recognition. We do get people visiting from other places around the world coming to see it, and I've had the privilege of meeting some of those and talking with them. But my biggest focus is local community. It's in the title of my job title, community.
How do you see the red zone and your role in it developing over the next five to ten years?
It's an exciting place to be in. And I think a lot of that is because of those communities that have continued to stand up for the spaces and advocate for them. I really enjoy working with those community members and the passion that they bring. It's quite inspiring. I think it's going to go from strength to strength. If we continue on the trajectory and we continue to support it and fund it in the way that’s intended, it's going to be beautiful. I can see lots of stormwater ponds and forests and plantings, and then people riding and cycling through and enjoying it in this amazing green heart to our city.
Bioblitz
I'd love to think that the awa will benefit, that we can maybe turn back the tide on water quality. That's a bigger challenge than what we can achieve when we're on the downstream side of the river, but who knows? Maybe the city will embrace that whole network approach and we'll see swimmable rivers again in the future. That would be the dream. And you can see that the new City to Sea pathway has definitely brought more people back into the red zone and the place feels positive and vibrant and buzzing. At the same time, we've still got all those wonderful hidden corners and nooks and crannies and quiet spaces where you can just roam without being
directed by a path. So, it's got the best of both worlds. And I hope we retain some of that sort of wild, untouched - well not untouched of course - but that wild feel where you can explore and discover.
The transitional use element is exciting for me because it gives permission to try things out without having to worry about whether they’re going to be successful or not. This came out of the earthquakes; there were all those organisations like Gapfiller: just give things a go, it doesn't have to look perfect. I think sometimes with council we get a bit restricted by people's perception of what a council project should look like. But if it's community-driven and it's temporary, we can be a bit more relaxed about things and that opens up opportunities for all sorts of creative endeavours.
So, yes, I love the opportunity. I think if we remain open to the community giving us ideas, then that enthusiasm won't wane, it'll continue to grow. Once things get a bit more developed in the scheme of things, with the regeneration plan, those areas of opportunity may reduce, but hopefully by then we've brought in all that community feedback and we've developed a space that everyone can see that they've had a part to play in. And the new pathway will keep strengthening those lateral connections with communities like New Brighton. For a long time New Brighton has felt neglected and ignored, and now they've got this beautiful plan and with the pathway that it can only strengthen both projects.
Then there’s the awa, the river. I don't think many people have visited the spring where the Avon starts deep underground, with that beautiful bubbling water coming up. The river then runs right through the heart of our city and in some places looks shocking and neglected. But I understand the challenges when you've got private properties that come all the way down and lawns that need to be mowed to the inch, and then brick walls that are holding up the sides of the river so it doesn't expand into those pristine lawns. Not everyone values riparian planting in the same way. In the red zone some people question why are we planting ‘their’ side of the river when that's their view of the water. And I say ‘well, why would you want a view of the water when we're not supporting that water to be the best that it can be through riparian planting?’ So it's a weird juxtaposition of people's values.
I feel that as we continue to do that work and people can see the benefit of it, then hopefully we might change the minds of those further upstream that have been resistant to that sort of work. And where we've got active and engaged community that understand those values working in these spaces then maybe their influence can spread, and eventually we'll have that connected riparian edge all the way along. The Opawho Heathcote River Network is a good model for showing how connected communities can support each other and manage that operationally. I just want to be part of a team that's putting plants in the ground and supporting them with good advocacy and getting engaged in policy.
But I'm just here to support. I've got a mission, I've got a vision in mind. And you need to bring people with you, you can't be too bureaucratic about it. And I say this as a government employee. People don't like unnecessary bureaucracy, but in some ways it's a necessary evil. You can approach it in a way that's more tangible. I feel like I'm a doorway rather than a wall into council and its processes. That's how, at least, that's how I see myself. And hopefully that is how other people see me too.
Interview with Eric Pawson, at Christchurch City Council offices, 4 June 2026