Conservation volunteering officer jobs

Freshwater Habitats Trust is the UK’s leading charity for all freshwaters. We are an evidence-led conservation organisation working to protect freshwater wildlife through practical, innovative and scientifically robust conservation projects across the UK and Europe.

We are seeking an experienced and motivated Senior Project Officer to lead and support the development and delivery of Natural Flood Management (NFM) and wider freshwater conservation projects. The role will involve working closely with farmers, landowners, partner organisations, regulators and local communities to design and implement practical interventions that deliver multiple environmental benefits, including flood resilience, habitat restoration, water quality improvement and biodiversity recovery.

The successful candidate will play a key role in translating ecological evidence and catchment priorities into deliverable on-the-ground projects. This will include developing funding opportunities, managing project delivery, overseeing contractors and surveys, supporting stakeholder engagement, and contributing to strategic landscape-scale initiatives.

The role will work closely with colleagues across the organisation, including technical specialists, project teams and senior management, helping to ensure projects are evidence-based, deliverable and aligned with Freshwater Habitats Trust’s wider conservation objectives.

This position requires a proactive, organised and enthusiastic individual with strong project management and communication skills, who works well collaboratively whilst remaining self-motivated and solution focused. Experience of catchment management, landowner engagement and practical habitat restoration delivery would be highly advantageous.

Freshwater Habitats Trust is an equal opportunity employer. We encourage applications from candidates of all backgrounds and experiences.

Application pack and further details available from our website

Please send the application form as well as your CV

No agencies, please.

Closing Date: Friday 12 June 2026 at 5 pm

Interview Date: Monday, 22nd 

As Scotland’s leading nature conservation charity, we welcome applications from individuals who are looking to join us in our journey of protecting Scotland’s wildlife for the future.

From major species and landscape restoration projects, to managing our network of wildlife reserves and campaigning for nature, we work for Scotland’s wildlife year-round.

We give a voice to wildlife through our policy and campaigning work, demonstrate best practice through practical conservation work, engage with people to take positive action through our education programmes and events, and so much more.

Title: Community Outreach Officer - Saving Scotland’s Red Squirrels

Status: Full time (35 hrs/week), Fixed term (until 31st March 2028)

Salary: £25,000 per annum pending review

Location: Blairgowrie Office, Perthshire (working across the Central lowlands and Southern Highlands)

Closing date: 15th June 2026

The Role:

The Community Outreach Officer will contribute to the protection of the Highland Line (HL), a coast-to-coast control zone which aims to prevent grey squirrels from moving north from Central Scotland into the red strongholds of the Highlands and Grampians. Progressed through a programme of targeted grey squirrel monitoring and control, you’ll help support the protection and expansion of red squirrel populations in accordance with the Saving Scotland’s Red Squirrels strategy. This role requires an approachable individual with experience recruiting, motivating, training, coordinating and managing community-based volunteers (groups and individuals) to undertake active conservation work.

Key Responsibilities and Duties:

• Working closely with the Monitoring and Control Officers (MCOs)
• Supporting and expanding volunteer networks through volunteer recruitment and onboarding
• Data entry and digital records
• Engaging and building relations with key stakeholders, landowners and local authorities
• Providing community network support and communications.  This will include identifying opportunities to engage difficult-to-reach people and new audiences in the Central Lowlands.

Specifically, this includes:

1. Recruiting, training and supporting volunteers to carry out fortnightly feeder box monitoring surveys, ensuring they have the equipment and consumables required, and providing practical support and temporary survey cover as needed.
2. Manage and coordinate the processing of monitoring samples and resulting data. Tis includes the analysis of hair samples to identify and record red squirrel, grey squirrel or pine marten detections and sharing results with volunteers
3. Alongside the SSRS HL team, engaging with and recruit new landowners/managers to undertake grey squirrel control and monitoring on their land.
4. Developing methodologies to ensure sustained engagement and data sharing to support independent controllers across the Highland Line region
5. Engaging and building relations with new and existing stakeholders to support the project.
6. Leading strategic events, talks, and other activities to promote active community understanding and participation of red squirrel conservation in Scotland

The successful candidate will:

• Possess a relevant degree
• Have experience of recruiting, motivating, training, coordinating and managing volunteers
• A good understanding of conservation principles, invasive non-native species management, wildlife practices and legislation
• Experience of working with landowners, gamekeepers, foresters and the public is desirable
• Experience with keeping and maintaining accurate records using Microsoft packages is essential and knowledge of ArcGIS would be useful
• There may occasionally be a requirement to work out of normal working hours
• You must possess a full clean driving licence and have use of a vehicle

Closing date: midnight Monday 15th June

Interview date:  Thursday 25th June

Are you passionate about restoring nature, and want to develop your technical expertise within an organisation which provides data and insight into environmental decision making, both locally and nationally.

Somerset Environmental Records Centre are looking for a Data Officer who can help us deliver our core services, but also help us to build upon those, to maximise our conservation impact.

Data Officer – Somerset Environmental Records Centre
Salary: Banding Level 2 - £26,500 - £28,000 per annum
Contract type: Permanent
Working hours: Full time
Location: Taunton, Somerset (Opportunity for hybrid working)

About Us:

Somerset Wildlife Trust is a local independent charity. We are the only organisation uniquely focused on improving the natural environment of Somerset for the benefit of wildlife and people. We protect, and lead the recovery of Somerset’s stunning, diverse, and important natural environment, making the case for nature to the public and politicians.

The Somerset Environmental Records Centre (SERC) is a non-profit organization hosted by the Somerset Wildlife Trust. We serve as the county’s central hub for data regarding wildlife sightings, habitats, and geology.

About you and the Role

You’ll be part of a team where new software and techniques can do some of the heavy lifting, but we also need you to be resourceful and innovative in your thinking. You will work closely with our Data Manager and colleagues, to refine existing systems and processes, and ensure best practice is embedded in everything that we do. Including within the centre’s data acquisition, collation, synthesis, management and analysis, where diligence and achieving efficiencies, are both priorities.

Principal elements of the role are to assist in the Data Management process within SERC, data governance and policy, data collection and capture, storage, security, integration and analysis. This includes software management and working with existing data and acquiring or accessing new data and evidence from varying sources. You’ll help ensure all incoming and outgoing data processes run smoothly, securely and are up to date, to fulfil SERC’s mission as the ‘go to’ ecological data evidence provider for the county.

Whilst working closely with the Data Manager and Head of SERC, there will be opportunities for personal development and to work with other team members in the promotion and growth of SERC, ensuring environmental information is gathered, stored, analysed, interpreted and managed in line with the requirements of the SERC partnership.

Responsibility 1: Data Management

• Helping maintain the integrity of SERC data in the databases and GIS system. This includes the establishment and conformity to SERC IT policies and protocols, ensuring that data integrity is maintained, routine data quality processes are carried out, and data protection legislation is adhered to, for example regarding personally identifiable data such as GDPR.
• Uploading data to the databases as required. Responsible for the smooth and timely transfer of data between databases/systems, such as uploads from Mapmate files and NBN uploads/extracts, discussing and resolving technical issues as necessary.
• Carrying out the analysis of SERC’s data holdings and identifying gaps at least annually in order to inform the following year’s activities.
• Undertaking SLA deliverables regarding data extracts in a timely and accurate manner as required by each Service Level Agreement.
• Providing technical input to the development of SERC software applications to assist SERC in streamlining its services and developing its products.
• Working with the SERC Data Manager and team to optimise SERC’s Engineering Data Management Process to facilitate current and future mandatory Government policies, such as BNG etc.
• Actively sharing IT and systems knowledge and skills with colleagues and volunteers.

Responsibility 2: Data Security

• Working with the SERC Data Manager to continually maintain robust systems and processes, and seek improvements in data security, for example embedding metadata into spatial outputs etc.
• Ensuring backup arrangements are adequate, ensuring data is as secure as it can be and that recovery procedures work as expected.
• Implementing the correct processes, tools, and controls to secure and protect SERC’s databases against accidental and intentional threats. Secure sensitive data and maintain the confidentiality, availability, and integrity of the databases and associated applications, systems, physical and virtual servers, including all other storage medium held on and off-site, and network infrastructure.

We offer some fantastic benefits including:

• 7% employer pension contribution
• Life assurance
• Flexible and agile working
• Wellbeing support – EAP, wellbeing champions
• Diversity networks through RSWT/TWT
• Paid volunteer days
• Continuous Professional Development opportunities
• 33 days of holiday (25 + bank holidays) + Christmas shutdown
• Staff social calendar and events

The opportunity to make a real and positive difference to nature, communities and the climate

Closing date: Monday 15 June 2026

Interested?

If you would like to find out more, please click the apply button. You will be directed to our website to complete your application for this position.

No agencies please.

Groundwork South is seeking a motivated and experienced Senior Project Officer to lead on the delivery of our Climate Action Fund project over the next five years.

Senior Project Officer (Climate Action Fund Training and Development Lead)
Reference: CAF0626
Contract: Fixed term until June 2031
Hours: Full-Time, 37.5 hours each week
Salary: £28,000 - £32,000 per annum
Location: Home-based (with travel across the England) – There is a focus on South West England during the pilot phase

About Us

Groundwork South works with communities across the south of England to transform their lives and the places where they live. We have been at the forefront of social and environmental regeneration for over 25 years, and today we have a simple mission: to create better places, improve people’s prospects, and promote greener living and working.

We are passionate about creating a future where every neighbourhood is vibrant and green, every community is strong and able to shape its own destiny, and no-one is held back by their background or circumstances. This vision drives the work that we do. Each year we deliver over 100 innovative projects, tackling the biggest issues facing our communities and creating real and lasting, positive change.

About the Project

Communities Prepared works with volunteers and communities across England to help them build the skills, confidence and knowledge needed to prepare for, respond to and recover from emergencies. This includes supporting communities to plan for climate-related risks such as flooding, storms, heatwaves, and severe weather.

Despite the successes we have had through our programme to date, we are not currently reaching diverse enough audiences and too often there are people missing from the resilience sector. This needs to change. To address this we are now embarking on an exciting new UK-wide partnership programme funded through the National Lottery Community Fund’s Climate Action Fund over the next five years.

The programme responds to growing evidence that climate-related emergencies, including extreme heat, flooding, fire, cold and severe weather, disproportionately impact marginalised communities, while those same communities are often excluded from resilience planning and decision-making.

The programme brings together Equally Ours, Communities Prepared (part of Groundwork South), and the VCS Emergencies Partnership (VCSEP, part of the British Red Cross) to strengthen climate resilience by ensuring that communities experiencing discrimination and disadvantage are at the heart of climate preparedness, response, recovery and policy-making.

Through a rights-based and co-produced approach, the programme seeks to shift climate resilience policy and practice away from models that frame communities as “vulnerable”, and towards approaches grounded in agency, participation, equality and shared responsibility.

Key Responsibilities

As Senior Project Officer, you will:

• Work with the project team to map stakeholders and co-develop a structured engagement plan to recruit and work with marginalised communities.
• Build a collaborative and trusting relationship with the partner organisations and other stakeholders for this project, ensuring this work meets their expectations and complements areas of the work programme led by others.
• Work with project participants and partners to co-design Communities Prepared material and delivery methods that are more accessible and relevant to diverse audiences.
• Lead on the delivery of resilience training and workshop sessions with diverse audiences, both in-person and online.
• Work with project participants and partners to co-design a train the trainer model that will enable diverse audiences to deliver resilience training within their own communities, amplifying reach and impact.
• Work with the core Communities Prepared team to adapt our offer with the long-term goal of the Programme reaching more diverse audiences, especially those seldom heard in this sector.

The role involves regular travel across the UK, with a focus on South West England during the project’s pilot phase.

We are looking for someone with:

• Experience in community engagement or community development.
• Experience delivering training or workshops.
• Strong organisational and project management skills.
• Excellent communication and relationship-building skills, confident to engage people from a range of different backgrounds.
• Experience working with multiple stakeholders or partners.
• Confidence working independently in a remote role.
• An interest in climate change, community resilience and wider community development.
• A willingness to travel across the country.

Closing date for applications: 11.59pm, 30th June 2026
Interview date: 15th July over MS Teams
Interview panel: Representatives from Groundwork South, Equally Ours and VCSEP (tbc)

Interested?

If you would like to find out more, please click the apply button. You will be directed to our website to complete your application for this position.

Groundwork South is an equal opportunities employer and welcomes applications from all members of the community.

No agencies please.