Employer: National Park
Job Responsibilities / Majority of time is spent doing:
GIS, field surveying (peat, meadows, birds) report writing, data management, organising survey season with volunteers, peat projects, contractor tendering / supervision (project management), working with students, meetings, partnership work, helping colleagues with GIS. Natural Capital. I would have said my job is like “applied geography”!
Time is spent mainly indoors 75% with 25% outdoors: depending on the season. To an extent I organise my own time with the aim of achieving broad annual aims - it is great to have this freedom.
Not much seasonal variation however, in winter when weather is bad can’t do the field work.
Qualifications needed:
Difficult to say but I have an MSc in Countryside Management. Having said that my first degree was in French and I don’t actually use that in my day to day job although I would like to. But I don’t have a background in science. Additional training (e.g. DBS, regular chainsaw renewal etc.) - I have evolved into this role, I think I got it because of my experience with GIS and project management, the rest I have learnt on the job.
Skills needed:
Enthusiasm, asking questions, chatty, work on initiative, be useful, team work, desire to specialise but also be a generalist, attention to detail, be cheerful, be pragmatic (theory stuff doesn’t work in practice and things are far less black-and-white than studies would have you believe)
If you have any questions about being an ecologist please Ask CJS.