AFON
Island Life – my conservation story so far – Morgan Vaughan
Anyone who is gearing their career towards the conservation or environmental preservation sector will be fully aware from the off, it’s not an easy road. In this day and age where jobs in conservation are like gold dust and everybody wants to work outdoors, the stakes are high and the competition fierce.
I graduated in 2012, a tough time in all job sectors, but I left university with my degree in animal science feeling optimistic. Optimistic I could make it in the conservation field and that I’d be able to make a difference. I did however have a realistic expectation of what lay before me. I knew I was going to have to work hard, make connections and force my foot through many doors before finding a realistic means to work in conservation full time.
I finished my last exam on a Wednesday and by Friday in was in Iceland. I’d managed to get myself a volunteering placement on a project looking at minke whales for the summer. It was a great start. I was living the dream.
Although, a year down the line I was completely disillusioned as to what I was doing. I was stuck. Working for a high-street coffee shop chain, living back with my parents. Not the highflying conservation dream I had in mind. While working to pay the bills, anytime off I had went on volunteering, to further my practical experience and more importantly to meet new people. I was volunteering for the local wildlife trust building dormouse boxes, a local animal shelter cleaning cages of unwanted and abandoned animals, the woodland trust coppicing hazel. Anything I could. When people ask me how I have got to where I am today, there is only one answer. Volunteering.
In 2013 I began volunteering for the RSPB in Cornwall. While out birding I had a chance sighting of a chough, somewhere I didn’t expect to find one. I got in touch with the Cornwall chough project and following a couple of conversations with the chough warden, ended up as a volunteer. That breeding season I was dedicating any free time I had to the chough. It was a bit more like what I had in mind. I’d daydream while serving an endless queue of grumpy people in a coffee shop about my chough and it would be a true escape on days off to be out on the cliffs watching the charismatic corvids.
Later that year I was invited to volunteer on the Isle of Scilly on a date with nature event, leading guided walks around Tresco and talking to people about the work the RSPB does in the area and as an organisation as a whole. I was hooked. I loved what the RSPB does as an organisation and everyone I was meeting from recruitment to office staff to wardens all were like minded – I wanted in.
That Autumn I decided, enough was enough. I got in touch with the residential volunteering department at the RSPB’s HQ and preceded to beg for some long-term volunteering. I was offered Oronsay, Inner Hebrides, Scotland. I already knew I was game for it, I’d previously read about the RSPB’s work there and knew that they had chough. I was delighted. Even more delighted when I handed in my notice at the coffee shop. It raised some eyebrows. Disbelief from some that I was giving up a job to go and work for free on a Scottish island doing “bird stuff”. It was the best. I was getting back on track, I could feel it.
I had a 6 month placement on Oronsay over the winter. Working on the reserve is a unique experience. The RSPB run an in-hand farming operation on the island with the aim or preserving and promoting corn crake and chough. I was hooked, an island with just 5 other people on it, in Scotland with chough. It was a dream come true. And the skills I was picking up were just amazing. Working with livestock, tractors, 4×4 on the practical side and working on chough conservation was just amazing.
As winter turned to spring and my epic time volunteering was drawing to a close on Oronsay I turned my attention back to applying to jobs. I knew I wanted to be an RSPB man now so I began focussing my attention on RSPB vacancies. I was incredibly fortunate to get a job that April, I’d successfully interviewed for the ‘Project Officer’ job on the Chesil beach little terns. I was over the moon. I spent the summer on the beach looking after the tern colony, hard work but rewarding.
Come the Autumn, the assistant warden post on Oronsay was being advertised. I knew this was the job I wanted. Having spent the winter there I knew I could hack it. Chough were calling again. I put in an application and bagged the job. I was where I wanted to be, doing what I loved. Oronsay is a lifestyle, more than a just job.
My advice to anyone trying for a career in conservation is persistence. I’ve been there, it is so easy to become completely disheartened when applying for jobs but the key really is making the connections. Volunteering as broadly as I could worked for me, keeping the options open. If you have a specific area in mind, you can then hone and target the sort of volunteering as required. It’s no good applying for jobs you’ve not got the relevant experience for. Having been on both sides of the interview table, relevant experience in what it takes to get where you want to go. Don’t settle for less, it really is what you make it and to make a difference for conservation, you have to get you there, meet like-minded people and work hard.
