One chapter ends as a new one begins

Jake sums up his traineeship as he's off to take up his first paid role in conservation...

I have been on my traineeship for nine months now and what a nine months it has been! However, my traineeship will end on the 10^th June as I have landed my first paid position in conservation - I am now the new Reserve Officer for Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Northamptonshire (BCN) Wildlife Trust. I will be proudly focusing my effort and passion on their North Chilterns chalk living landscape area.

It goes without saying that I am extremely excited to start the next journey in my career and that it hasn’t really sank in yet. On the other hand, I am very sad to be saying goodbye to Worcestershire Wildlife Trust as it feels like home. I feel a blog is in order to show my development during my traineeship and hopefully show any potential trainees what an incredible opportunity this is and what it can do for a future career.

It’s hard to condense nine months into one blog but I'm going to try my best. When I think about what I’ve learnt during this time, I try to categorise my experiences to make this easier. One of these categories is habitat management, which is obviously a broad subject and there are habitats that I haven’t worked on, of course, but I now have a well-balanced management knowledge that can bring forth ideas just by walking a site or nature reserve. Largely this knowledge has been gained by working with reserve officers, carrying out habitat management work and creating management plans. This knowledge is going to be vital going into my job with BCN Wildlife Trust.

Another practical habitat management skill that has been woven into my work is the importance of health and safety and risk assessments. Maybe not the most exciting thing to mention in this blog but, believe me, this is so important. When you think about the potentially dangerous machinery and tools we are using - chainsaws, brushcutters, post bashers and many others - and the fact that we’re using these on reserves that are usually accessible to the public, we're not only thinking about the safety of ourselves and colleagues but also visitors on the site. Understanding how to use all this equipment in a safe and correct way becomes the most important thing you do and the training you get for these tools really drills this fact home. I now find myself instinctively looking out for risks and removing them even when working without tools and it’s now automatic for me, which I love!

Something that I never really thought about before the traineeship were how important people were to our nature reserves and how much of a impact humans can have, both bad and good. Starting with the cons, I’ve seen the impact people have when they don’t listen to guidelines on nature reserves – for example, dogs being off lead and people creating their own paths, camping, litter, den-building etc. These activities can cause great disturbance to both wildlife and the habitat itself - from ground- or near-ground-nesting birds, flowers like bluebells and primrose and even insect communities that can take a considerable amount of time to thrive. It can often feel that trying to overcome this is a losing battle but good communication, having wardens present and clear signage can all help to encourage visitors to stick to our guidelines in order to help wildlife when visiting our nature reserves, which are there primarily as refuges for some of our most precious and threatened species.

Having said that, there are certainly positives; people can have a fantastic impact on our nature reserves! I instantly think of our volunteers and there hasn’t been a better year to see the impact of not having our volunteers help with habitat management than with the COVID19 pandemic. Lockdowns quite rightly put volunteer work parties on hold and we noticed a massive impact on the work we can get done on our sites without our fantastic army of volunteers. I, for one, have noticed how much more work we can get done since restrictions have lifted and work parties have started back up again.

Conservation trainees - Iain, Amy, Jake, Ruthie, Issy — Iain, Amy, Jake, Ruthie, Issy

As I said at the start of the blog, there have been so many experiences to try and fit in that it’s basically impossible! I haven’t included everything but I did want to add something that surprised me personally. Before the traineeship started I would imagine what it was going to be like when I started - I expected to get loads of experience in practical habitat management, tool maintenance, driving bigger vehicles, surveys, volunteer leading, volunteer recruitment etc. I haven’t been disappointed in this - in fact, I never expected to get some of the experiences like management plans, working on bird survey data and pond creation just to name a few. But the biggest surprise has been the people. I knew that Worcestershire Wildlife Trust had a great inviting feeling about it from the interview but I didn’t know that my colleagues would be one of my favourite things about my experience. Even in a pandemic, where I haven’t met a lot of the WWT staff face-to-face, I’ve felt at home here and one of the team. I’ve had people give up early mornings for me to teach me surveying techniques and I’ve had the feeling throughout the traineeship that people have really wanted to help us; it never felt forced. People have gone out their way to give us plenty of experience and knowledge that we can carry into a career because they wanted to. They wanted to share their passion and I am very grateful. So a massive thank you to everyone at WWT; I appreciate the time everyone has given me!

I also wanted to give a special thank you to the trainee team. Without them this experience wouldn’t have been the same and it’s been a real pleasure to get to know the four of them and call them my team. I look forward to following everyone’s careers and, who knows, our paths might just cross again?!