Local Wildlife Sites Officer

Local Wildlife Sites Officer

Closing date: Wednesday 3^rd May 2023

Interview date: To be confirmed.

Salary: £25,00-27,000 per pa, dependant upon skills and experience

Contract type: 1-year fixed-term, with possibility of permanent position thereafter.

Location: Tyland Barn

Summary: The Local Wildlife Sites Officer will lead on delivery and development of the Local Wildlife Sites system in Kent and Medway.

We are unable to recruit anyone who does not have a right to work in the UK.

Globally and nationally wildlife is in steep decline. We appear to be reaching critical tipping points around the loss of biodiversity as well as around climate change, both being interlinked. Human society cannot prosper without wildlife and healthy ecosystems.??? 

Kent’s wildlife needs to be restored to much higher levels. We can no longer allow common things to become rare. We can only do this by restoring large-scale natural habitat areas and processes. Doing this will contribute to solving global problems. But we won’t be able to do this unless we publicly aspire to a higher level of impact and show that we can deliver this.

Kent Wildlife Trust is the leading wildlife charity for Kent and Medway, supported by its members and staffed by committed professionals.  Join our team and help us create a Wilder Kent! In return we will inspire you, listen to you, value you, treat you equally and fairly, look after your health and wellbeing and encourage flexibility from day one, enabling you to draw on these benefits to be a better, happier and more productive you.

Background:

As Kent Wildlife Trust strives to deliver a Wilder Kent, landscape-scale conservation is increasingly important to ensure bigger, better and more joined up biodiverse areas across Kent, to increase the resilience, functioning and services of ecosystems across Kent. This is an exciting time for the Trust as it surges ahead with ambitious projects to deliver nature’s recovery, including an ever-growing portfolio of nature-based solutions projects featuring wilding, landscape-scale conservation, catchment resilience and carbon sequestration.

Local Wildlife Sites are non-statutory sites, that together provide an exhaustive list of areas in Kent with important biological communities, outside of statutory designations such as SSSIs and NNRs. Whilst they are acknowledged in planning and development decisions, LWS landowners are free to manage their land as they wish. Therefore, liaising with LWS landowners and working closely with the Farm Cluster Team to encourage positive management actions across the network is crucially important for the long-term conservation of Local Wildlife Sites.

The Local Wildlife Sites Officer will work within the Monitoring and Evidence (M&E) team. They will take the lead to administer Kent’s Local Wildlife Sites (LWS) system, with key roles including delivering a rolling program of site surveys, developing a LWS strategy, identifying new candidate LWSs, updating site schedules and GIS boundary data, maintaining a landowner geodatabase, liaising with local planning authorities, presenting LWS amendments in consultations, visiting sites and providing management advice to landowners, and overseeing the Richard Neame Award and LWS landowner newsletter.

You: 

This post would suit an early-career professional, with a minimum of 2-years experience of relevant paid or unpaid employment in conservation. The successful applicant will have a good understanding and demonstrable experience of natural history, ecology and nature conservation in the UK, a high level of initiative, basic GIS and analytical skills, good interpersonal and communication skills, and a passion for working with landowners towards conservation outcomes. You will be at the cutting edge of nature conservation work in the UK, positioned to develop your experience and knowledge and to build a professional reputation. In doing so, you will have the support of Kent Wildlife Trust’s commitment to the professional development of its staff.

Contact details:

If you wish to discuss this post, please contact jobs@wilderkent.org.uk to arrange a call.? 

For an application pack please visit our website: www.kentwildlifetrust.org.uk/jobs

The Kent Wildlife Trust Group is Wild About Inclusion. To us, this means inspiring, empowering and engaging people from all backgrounds, cultures, identities and abilities, to change the natural world for the better.

It also means cultivating inclusive workspaces that are free from discrimination, where differences are celebrated, everyone can be themselves and flourish, just like nature!