Since moving to the Yorkshire Dales in 2023, I have become deeply involved in nature conservation. I am especially interested in issues facing upland environments, and have undertaken a range of training in conservation-related skills including: 
  • L2 in Forestry with the Horticultural Correspondence College (ongoing) 
  • Cross-cutting, chainsaw maintenance and felling small trees (upcoming) 
  • Hedgelaying (upcoming) 
  • ATV training (upcoming) 
  • Tree climbing and aerial rescue (upcoming) 
  • PA1/PA6 (upcoming) 
  • Soil assessment training (upcoming)
  • Introduction to Dry Stone Walling
  • Scything course (1 day)
  • LANTRA Tree health inspection
  • Ground flora and grasses ID training 
  • Lichen ID training 
  • AIM L2 Woodland Management 
  • Landscape Design training 
  • Woodland Resilience training
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Employment

I currently work as a Woodland Trainee for the Yorkshire Dales Millennium Trust. Through this, I have gained a wide range experience in woodland conservation, meadow conservation and community engagement. 
The bulk of my work is focused on woodland conservation, which includes completing constraints checks for woodland creation sites, organising trees and materials for the planting season, tree planting, organising woodland maintenance days (such as guard removal and stake straightening), developing woodland management plans, setting up community tree nurseries and running tree nursery events such as box building, seed collecting and potting on. 

I am currently working on a joint project with Natural England to restore rare willow species in the Yorkshire Dales. We are currently focusing on dark-leaved, tea-leaved and creeping willows but may expand this in the future. So far, I have travelled across the Dales to identify locations for these willows, made a map of their locations using QGIS, and soon we will return to take cuttings from the willows and grow them in local tree nurseries, to then be planted in local woodland creation schemes. 
I am also developing baseline surveys so that we can measure improvements in biodiversity at our woodland creation sites. 

Volunteering

I first became involved in conservation through volunteering in dry stone walling with the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust on the Wild Ingleborough project, a large scale restoration project on Ingleborough in the western Dales. 

I am currently working with the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority to develop objectives for the new Management Plan for the national park, which will provide an outline of priorities and objectives for organisations working in the national park over the next 5 years.