Working with trees - a career in woodland conservation

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By Macbradan Bones, Nature Recovery Advisor at Forestry Commission

My career in conservation started late - I grew up in London, spending most of my free time in the local woods and at my grandparent’s rural Oxfordshire home, but with no connection to countryside industries. The only relevant career advice for working with trees was “study commercial forestry in Aberdeen”- at that time, one of the few colleges in the UK offering any ‘woody’ courses!

I didn’t know much, but I knew that wasn’t the direction I wanted to go in, so I ended up working with trees in a different way, as a furniture restorer.

After almost 12 years as a restorer and carpenter, I began to think about working in the countryside again and in 1998, applied to study Countryside Related Studies (aka Practical Habitat Management) at Merrist Wood College in Surrey.

As soon as the course finished, I started working for a local tree surgery company on rail side vegetation management; not exactly conservation, but in a few months, I had gone from novice to adept as a chainsaw user.

I had started subscribing to CJS (postal in those days!) after finishing college, and it wasn’t long before I found my first proper conservation job, as a ranger on a 600-acre (243 ha) estate with a large SSSI ancient wood. I began as a seasonal ranger, but I ended up staying for almost 2 years. During that time, I learned a huge amount about managing SSSI’s, veteran trees and woodland management along with gaining an understanding of the pros and cons of recreational pressure and people management.

That first job was the breakthrough we all look for - it wasn’t well paid and certainly not a job for life, but it gave me enough experience to start looking for permanent, more fulfilling roles.

For the next 4 years I worked for local authorities as a ranger and estate worker, (always keeping my eye on the job market for my dream job), gaining experience in land management, particularly woodlands and forestry, both practical and academic.

In 2005 I was working in Surrey, helping to manage a SSSI acid grassland and heath site with several hectares of mature conifer plantation.

Each week the boss would bring a copy of CJS into our break room (at what was he hinting!?) and one day I saw a fantastic chance; working for a wildlife trust as one of a team of 3 looking after 90 nature reserves across the county; from saline grazing marsh to riparian and from Ancient semi-natural woodland (ASNW) to uninhabited islands just off the coast.

I got the job, and spent the next 17 years delivering almost every habitat management task you can imagine, whilst learning from some incredible people and developing a wide range of skills and knowledge.

In that time, I got involved in so many things I could write a book, but some of the strongest memories are - seeing a red kite in the county for the first time as it took a vole I’d just exposed by cutting hay (sorry vole!), watching seals watch us with definite disdain as we struggled to row against the tide after the engine failed mid-way, hanging out of an oak to pass barn owl chicks to the ringer, opening a soprano pip roost box to find 20cm of guano. Clearing secondary growth from a lunar-like brownfield site, designing and installing an accessible habitat-covered hide, leading veteran tree management courses, hurdle making with military veterans from Help for Heroes and teaching recovering addicts woodland management as part of their rehabilitation, writing the tree and woodland policy and oh, all those Countryside Stewardship (CS) application maps and forms! Becoming the go-to for woodland and tree management and most importantly, meeting the woman who became my wife!

All good things must come to an end and all that, so by 2022 I felt that I had done all I could in the role, and as I was now past 50, (which my body kept reminding me!) it felt like time to use my experience and knowledge to guide others.

So, in 2022 I left the wildlife trust to join the Forestry Commission as a Woodland Officer, delivering woodland advice and regulation in many of the woods I’d spent the past 17 years working in. I loved the job (apart from dealing with alleged illegal felling, which is never fun,) and after a year an opportunity arose to work from National Office as a Nature Recovery Advisor, working with Responsible Authorities, Natural England, Environment Agency and other stakeholders for the creation of Local Nature Recovery Strategies, the statutory plans laid out in the Environment Act 2021 to address the twin challenges of biodiversity loss and climate change. My role is to advise on, and champion, the role of trees and woodlands, to help identify opportunities to protect, expand and restore our ancient and native woodlands, as well as promoting the key role of appropriately managed productive woodland in supporting nature recovery. I also advocate that they can provide wider environmental benefits such as flood amelioration, water quality improvements and climate change mitigation, and support home-grown timber to offset our footprint overseas.

Through this work, I’ve become involved in many exciting schemes and plans for nature’s recovery, with some diverse groups who have ambitious, but achievable, ideas, and the future is looking bright!

For those of you looking to a career in conservation my advice would be to keep the field wide, getting as many qualifications, both theoretical and practical, as you can will help enormously, but practical experience and getting to know the woodlands and the people who look after them is priceless. Start by volunteering with a local work party to learn the basics and try to get involved with every aspect of the work.

Finally, don’t be afraid to ask questions - pick the brain of everyone you can - you can’t know too much.

In his place of work at the Forestry Commission Macbradan is an Active listener, Suicide first aider and Well-being champion.

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