Student placements

In September 2021, Chandani joined the Living Collections team at WWT Washington as their year long placement. Working towards a degree in Zoology at Lincoln, she moved to Washington, WWT’s wetland centre on the banks of the River Wear. “The team at Washington are a great bunch and they really helped me feel at home here”.

When she started, Chandani was ready for working outside, in all weathers, long days and manual work. But it was her first experience working full time with a team. Over the year she gained so much experience and confidence. From handling birds, delivering talks to visitors, to helping the team deal with an outbreak of Avian Inluenza, the work was varied.

As well as providing training and access to all sorts of experiences, the team at Washington ran a mock recruitment, helping Chandani to really think about what she’d learnt and how it could apply to different jobs.

When she back to finish her degree, Chandani realised how much her time at Washington had boosted her confidence. “The impact on me has been huge”.

“Expressing every change, challenge, and area of growth through my time at WWT is incredibly difficult but during my time here I have developed in confidence in areas around birds, machines and tools and effective communication with people. I now have a greater appreciation of birds and the work that WWT does as a charity as well as the importance of wetlands as a unique ecosystem.”

Kate has fond memories of Washington Wetland Centre as a child. She still remembers her first time feeding a goose and is interested in the power of these kinds of experiences. Kate had graduated in Biology from Newcastle University, specialising in plants, and had planned an academic career. Feeling too disconnected from the implications of her work on the real world, Kate did some volunteering and then applied for the Practical Reserves placement at WWT Washington. “The people are just amazing – such a friendly, lovely bunch.”

As well as learning to use a full range of machinery and equipment to manage habitats, Kate got involved in wildlife surveying. Great Crested Newts and Bats were the highlights – both rare opportunities that had a real impact. “Wading around in ponds, never quite knowing what was going to happen. I’d never seen a Great Crested Newt before – the patterns on their belly are really gorgeous.” Applying her skills and running events like Bat Evenings for visitors was a highlight. Kate loves the bats so much she now volunteers with the local bat group as a bat carer.

What really stands out to Kate, is how much she was treated as part of the team. “I was trained well, they invested time in me teaching things – I gained loads of practical skills that I would never have got by myself.” So much so that Kate is about to start as a permanent member of staff – as a Reserves Warden at Washington.

In 2022, Lowri began her year long Practical Reserves Placement at WWT Llanelli; a restored wetland located in an internationally important area for waders and wildfowl.

Lowri worked here whilst achieving an undergraduate degree in Wildlife Conservation at Aberystwyth University. With existing interest in reserves management and past experience in practical conservation, Lowri’s interests were well supported in this role. During the autumn and winter months, Lowri gained experience in coppicing, brush cutting, brash burning, dead hedge, willow weaving and wetland bird surveys (WeBS). As spring and summer arrived WeBS counts continued, alongside nest box monitoring and surveying of breeding birds, water voles, invertebrates, reptiles and bats. Routine roles included: hide maintenance, livestock checks, water level monitoring, scrub management and record data entry.

Lowri describes the highlight of her experience as “Getting to work alongside knowledgeable and passionate people, whilst getting close to nature and knowing you’ve made a difference”. Lowri now strives to achieve a future career in outdoor practical conservation.

Abi had an odd start to her placement in August 2020. Much of the team were still furloughed and Slimbridge was unusually quiet. But colleagues stepped into the breach and Abi got stuck in to her Reserves Management HQ: Office and Research role. “Working with all the people is amazing – I made great contacts, for life I think, because everyone is so supportive and encouraging.”

The role crosses teams so Abi got to be involved in lots of different areas of work. She predominantly worked with the Wetland Science team and the Reserves Management team at Slimbridge. The role sits at the intersection of Reserves and Research – “it’s interesting to see how they meet and interact. It’s the kind of role that gives opportunities – you need to be able to grab them.”

The role gave Abi a window into how reserves are managed, how management plans are written and what they focus on – it gave a real sense of what the data means in practice. As well as enjoying field and lab work, Abi got involved in environmental eel DNA surveys. This interesting and emerging technology really grabbed her attention. Developing eDNA skills in the lab during extraction helped Abi to get her masters. She’s now working at WWT as a Researcher for our Flourishing Floodplains project, focussing a lot on eDNA. Abi is hoping to go on a do a PhD in this subject – those hours sampling water by the Severn have had a huge impact.

Charlie, an Environmental Science student from Bangor University, began her placement with little experience in nature conservation; keen to jump into the industry. The WWT team welcomed her with open arms. “One of the highlights was how friendly, welcoming and happy for us to learn from them everyone was – I felt really supported, the conservation team did a really good job at supporting early career researchers.”

Charlie also appreciated the fluidity of the role, which allowed her to work in an array of different departments, providing her with a mix of office, field, and lab work.

At the start of the year, Charlie’s schedule consisted of completing project management training, funding applications, recruitment, and expressions of interests, alongside waterbird tracking, cannon netting, pond coring and kick sampling. In December, changes to reserve management affected Charlie’s role, and she took the opportunity to replace admin roles with more conservation work. Core tasks carried on though - Recorder 6, riverfly surveys and water quality analysis. As the seasons warmed, curlew night time mist netting, presence/behaviour and breeding surveys commenced, alongside water vole surveys, eDNA sample collection/analysis and ditch surveys.

Aside from developing her confidence in field and lab work, Charlie became versed in various computer software. In particular, Charlie received training in QGIS, enabling her to train staff at WWT Caerlaverock, one of Charlie’s favourite experiences.

Ultimately, Charlie describes her main highlight as “The entire year, I loved it! It went so quickly - by the end of the year I felt like I had been there for five minutes but also five years!”

In September 2022, Sian Taylor began her 12-month Office and Research placement at WWT Slimbridge, the renowned ‘birthplace of modern conservation’.

With experience in conservation but undecided on her future career, Sian chose to gain skills in research, lab, and office work. The flexibility of the Office and Research role and the wide scope of wetland research conducted at WWT, enabled Sian to gain these skills in many fields.

Sian begun her placement completing a literature review for WWT’s Madagascar team, analysing pond cores, and collecting data from tagged waterbirds. In the spring and summer, water vole, moth and curlew breeding surveys took place, alongside nest protection and monitoring. Routine tasks persisted throughout: water quality analysis, riverfly surveys and stock checks.

Sian described working with the WWT’s Conservation Evidence team as “the best part for me… everyone made me feel valued and part of the team, and not just the placement student.” Support from Conservation Evidence enabled Sian to innovate an eDNA methodology for identifying predators of black tailed godwit and curlew nests. This pioneering work composed Sian’s third year dissertation and earned her an invitation to present at the 2023 IWSG conference in Germany! Her time at WWT has significantly improved Sian’s confidence and transferrable skills, enabling her to discover what she wants for her future career. “ The placement highlighted to me that I do want to work in applied research. I have a new found love for wetlands and wetland birds, as well as new interest and clarity in my career path.”