Meet Tamar Island Wetlands Centre volunteer John Duggin

This month marks the centre's 20^th anniversary and has acted as a chance to reflect on its history.

Mr Duggin is one who has been a witness to its history. He began as a volunteer 14 years ago and only a few years later became president of the volunteer group, and has been ever since.

It all began when he moved to Tasmania.

"Well I moved down from the mainland and I retired," he said.

"As my career was in academic activities at university and I had a research interest in wetlands, it was pretty obvious for me to say 'hey, that's just down the road a bit, I'd really love to keep my eye on wetlands' and that I do."

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Between 20-25 people volunteer at the centre and give more than 5000 combined hours to the wetlands each year to ensure the centre is open to greet and inform visitors.

They crew the information centre and shop, measure water quality, catch and take injured wildlife to a vet, keep track of noxious invasive fish and provide information on others activities to do in the region.

The long-time volunteer said what kept his interest and enthusiasm in the place most were the unusual and uncommon birds and other animals such as quolls and platypuses.

Mr Duggin said not a lot had changed in his 14 years there, except for one thing.

"We're looking forward to another good 20 years.

"Not much has changed except visitation, in the last five-eight years its increased quite significantly, percentage wise it's been one of the biggest increases in parks in Tasmania," he said.

"When I started there, we would have probably had 10,000-12,000 visitors a year and now we're up around 50,000.

"It's mostly a combination of people locally, from around the state and then when we don't have locked borders, mainlanders and overseas visitors. Quite often we get a few people from overseas that have actually searched on the web for things to do and found the Tamar Wetlands when they come to Tasmania and are dead keen to come and visit us. That's pretty exciting."

The park's visitation increase does not seem to be slowing down with Parks and Wildlife Service figures from earlier this year showing that visitation skyrocketed after coronavirus restrictions were being relaxed in May.

So much so, visitor numbers at the reserve and centre were up 22 per cent in June, compared to the same month in 2019.

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