Bison Ranger

Job Title: Bison Rangers (x 2)

Contract type: Fixed term until March 2023

Hours: Full time

Closing Date: 7th February 2021 at 5pm

Interview Date: 25th/26th February 2021

Salary: Up to £27,000 per year dependant on skills and experience

Based at: Wildwood/West Blean

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Globally and nationally wildlife is in steep decline. We appear to be reaching critical tipping points around the loss of biodiversity as well as around climate change, both being interlinked. Human society cannot prosper without wildlife and healthy ecosystems.

Kent’s wildlife needs to be restored to much higher levels. We can no longer allow common things to become rare. We can only do this by restoring large-scale habitat from degraded land. Doing this will contribute to solving global problems. But we won’t be able to do this unless we publicly aspire to a higher level of impact and show that we can deliver this.

The Wilder Blean Project is an exciting new project which looks to manage large parts of the West Blean and Thornden Woods at a landscape scale using principles of wilding management. These two roles will form integral parts of the wider project team, with the specific purpose of looking after and managing a small herd of bison within approximately 200ha of Blean Woods. The bison must be kept in as wild a state as possible in order for them to display their natural behaviour and have the greatest positive impact on the site therefore careful and sympathetic management will be essential to the fulfilment of this role.

Training will be provided, which will involve spending several months with ARK Naturr Ontwikkeling at several of their sites in the Netherlands. This will provide the necessary specific skills and understanding to manage free ranging bison in the Wilder Blean Project which are currently unavailable in the UK.

These two posts will be managed by both Kent Wildlife Trust and Wildwood Trust, with direct line management split between the two organisations.

For an application pack and to apply, please visit the KWT website