Sutton Nature Conservation Volunteers and London Borough of Sutton’s Biodiversity team are looking for a second Biodiversity Assistant.
I have been in the role for a good few months now and am enjoying it immensely. Here’s why you should join me…
Since October I have been helping the Biodiversity team in their duties from leading volunteer task days to admin and paperwork in the office. The second part may sound a little boring but it has opened my eyes to the ‘behind the scenes’ work that accompanies the practical conservation that Sutton Nature Conservation Volunteers help to carry out.
Personally it has thus far been a valuable learning experience. I had a little insight of the work I would be undertaking from talking to the Biodiversity team and my previous volunteering with SNCV, but was not aware of the immensity of the work undertaken by them.
I came to be the Biodiversity Assistant after over a year of volunteering experience with SNCV, so I was already familiar with the types of practical work done throughout the year and it has been thoroughly rewarding to get more involved with the organisation and leading of task days with the volunteers, learning new skills along the way.
Our task days involve a variety of activities, changing with the seasons. Since October we have of course been doing more ‘wintery’ work (which you can mentally exchange with ‘hard’ work) such as reed pulling, coppicing and felling. These jobs may well be hard, but they are certainly satisfying. Looking back at a newly created laund reduced from thick foliage, or an icy pond once dense with reeds at the end of the day is a great feeling.
While I have enjoyed these jobs very much, there’s a part of me (my back, mainly) that is looking forward to the survey season of spring and early summer! Just don’t remind me about the heavy raking work when it’s time for the meadows to be cut.
Speaking of surveys, my first job in the office was to draw maps for the Phase 1 botanical surveys we had undertaken in the preceding year, or ‘a bit of colouring’ as Dave Warburton the Biodiversity Officer described it. I had assisted with the surveying in the past but was unaware of this extra step, creating an easily recognisable and standardised map to show an overview of a site’s habitat. Just one example of the ‘behind the scenes’ work I hadn’t foreseen, but a job which while being interesting is also quite relaxing – mindfulness drawing, eat your heart out!
My days in the office are often spent doing admin work, managing the website and emails, data entry/analysis, or writing and researching blog posts. I really do enjoy all of it, particularly the latter. Could you tell from this rambling blog post?
The work I am undertaking here is paving the way towards a job in Ecology, picking up new skills all the time and being challenged in new ways.
Being a Biodiversity Assistant is a joy, I’d highly reccommend it.
If you’d like to be one too, click here to view the job specification, and apply as instructed.
Hope to see you soon!
Adam
Biodiversity Assistant
