Hello! I am BTCV Scotland’s Natural Communities trainee in Dumfries & Galloway. I’ll be working for the D&G Council as part of their Biodiversity Partnership, with placements taking me all round the region. During the year I’ll spend time working with RSPB, Cree Valley Community Woodlands Trust, River Annan District Salmon Fishery Board and the Council itself.
Since I arrived in D&G a month ago I’ve been taken on several tours of the region and still haven’t seen half of what’s out there. However, I am slowly building a picture of the environmental network that exists through D&G (and picking up other interesting things, e.g. it is really 3 shires and one is the only Stewartry in the country, the mountains are not proper mountains, merely hills, and the useful knowledge that some place names may be pronounced by ignoring most if not all of the letters present and choosing your own instead).
Barnacle Geese at RSPB Mersehead
In my first couple of weeks, apart from being a bit of a tourist, I also took part in a project at Palnackie primary school where children were guided by artist Hugh Bryden and poet Jean Atkin into creating their own paintings and poems inspired by the Millennium Viewpoint just outside their village. Palnackie is within a National Scenic Area, one of three in D&G.
Printing of the viewpoint by children of Palnackie primary school and Hugh Bryden
Last week I began my first placement with the RSPB, initially working on the Galloway Kite Trail. Red kites were reintroduced to Galloway from 2001-2005. The Galloway Kite Trail is a route around Loch Ken which provides fantastic opportunities to see kites against a stunning backdrop. This tourist attraction has allowed local people to benefit from the return of the kites, and indeed the success of the reintroduction project owes much to the support of local businesses. The GKT has had a significant positive impact on the local economy, and my first job with the RSPB is to collate visitor feedback from the past three years and look at trends in things like visitor spending, to see whether this has continued during the recession.
I will also be looking at visitor feedback from another brilliant event in the region: the Dumfries & Galloway Wildlife Festival. If you want something fun to do between 31st March – 15th April, look no further! There are loads of events going on and loads of opportunities to see wildlife and pick up some expert knowledge. I will be going along to as many events as possible, and not only that, I’ll be taking my family along with me (they don’t know it yet but they are coming). That’s my input to the local economy!
In case it is helpful to anyone hoping to get into similar jobs, I’ll briefly explain how I came to be a NC trainee: I did a four-year course in zoology at Manchester Uni, which included spending a year on a Greek island working for Archipelagos (a conservation NGO). While in Greece I also volunteered for Archelon (Sea Turtle Protection Society of Greece) – absolutely amazing work! After graduating I eventually took up a position as volunteer trainee warden with Earth Trust in Oxfordshire. I learned a whole new set of skills here, working with volunteer groups (the amazing Friday Group!), helping with events like the Lambing festival, and getting hands-on experience in habitat management (although I have since established that I still can’t build a fence on my own). Thanks to BTCV and Heritage Lottery Fund, I now have more opportunities to practise!
One final thing I want to mention: this is a photo of Carrifran Wildwood, Borders Forest Trust, on the eastern edge of Dumfries & Galloway. See all those small green lines (if the picture’s not too small)? Those are tree tubes. Volunteers have planted over 50,000 native trees here. This is a reminder to me that people can do amazing things when they put their minds to it. And an open invitation to Friday Group – I know they’d be up for the challenge of tree-planting on that slope!
