Now published: CJS Focus on Volunteering in association with RSPB

26 pages in total with nearly 60 adverts for volunteers and lots of listings for voluntary organisations and workdays, the lead article is from RSPB; looking to volunteer to gain experience in your chosen field or hoping for clarity on your career choices? RSPB has many ways in which you can do this whether you have little time or want to commit to a long term residential placement. Volunteering, a word that can strike dread in those looking to pursue careers in conservation - Elliot Newton from A Focus On Nature explains why you shouldn’t turn your back on volunteering. With all the current pressures on the countryside, parks & wildlife, the Countryside Management Association welcomes everyone who wants to make a difference - find out some of the areas of their work you can get involved in. The Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust has many volunteer roles across its sites but one role is becoming more & more popular & that is ‘volunteer photographers’ - find out from one such volunteer what makes it the task for him. Practical work days really can benefit you – the Canal & River Trust run a large number of work days on the Britain’s waterways and explain what you can get out of giving a bit of time. Scottish Countryside Rangers Association urgently needs more volunteers to help share the workload - find out how you can help. Kent Wildlife Trust has seen that traditional methods of recruitment, training & recognition of their volunteers are no longer achieving what they did now that the motivations for volunteering have changed – see what their new strategy is. Through an HLF grant and very dedicated staff Dean Castle Country Park has now become a place volunteers want to spend time – hear some of their volunteer stories. Read it here

CJS Professional September edition

The latest edition of CJS Professional is now online, read it in full here: www.countryside-jobs.com/Professional/current.htm   You may need to refresh your browser.

Jobs advertised in this Month's edition:
Torridge Headwaters Project Officer, Devon Wildlife Trust (funded until June  2020)
NIA Advisory Officer (Culm), Devon Wildlife Trust, based Cookworthy North Devon  (funded until June  2020)
Estate Manager, Busbridge Lakes  (Surrey)
Assistant Ranger / Estate Worker, Sudbury Common Lands Charity (Stour Valley)
Woodland Management Officer, National Forest Company
Head of Forestry & Estate Maintenance, Cambusmore Estate (near Callander, Perthshire)
Grounds and Rural Maintenance Person,  Noah's Ark Zoo Farm (N Somerset)
Landscape Ecologist, Somerset Wildlife Trust
Wildfowling Officer, BASC  (based Wrexham)
Senior Ecological Consultant, ADAS, location: Kent
Regional Officer Central, BASC ideally  based within the counties of Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire or Lincolnshire.
Nature Conservation Team Leader (Senior Ranger), Vison (London Borough of Redbridge) Fixed term to December 2018
2 x Engagement Officers (1 x Environment Engagement Officer & 1 x Heritage Engagement Officer) Land of the Fanns Landscape Partnership Scheme. (Thames Chase Forest Centre, Upminster) Full time fixed term contract (October 2017 to September 2021)
Ecologist or Senior Ecologist, Ecological Survey & Assessment Limited (ECOSA)
1 x Lead Arborist Woodsman and 1 x Woodsman, Tregothnan Estate, Truro, Cornwall
APPRENTICESHIP: Tomorrow’s Natural Leaders Yorkshire Wildlife Trust 4dpw 12 month placements various locations across Yorkshire

CJS Notices
CJS Focus on Volunteering in association with RSPB
CJS Focus on Volunteering in association with RSPB. Will be published on Monday 18 September
Early bird: The next edition will feature Forestry and Arboriculture, send suggestions now.

Details of additions to Surveys and Fieldwork section, 4 new listings this month
Surveys and Citizen Science: . Click here to see additions made during May.


Top headlines from the past month: Click here to read

Training Calendar Click here to read
Short Courses and Events in November  14 pages
Send information about your training courses today to training@countryside-jobs.com or submit online here. 

Print length this edition: 86
That's a lot to read however CJS Professional is set so that you can skim the headers and pick out the articles that are appropriate for you or use the links above to go direct to each section. and now with navigation at the top of the edition.

The next edition of CJS Professional will be published on: 12 October
Got something to share or want to advertise? The deadline is: 5pm Monday 9 October
Contact us by email: ranger@countryside-jobs.com

Email problems - updated

We're experiencing some email problems.
Some of the forms on the website are not submitting properly; when you click submit it looks like they've gone through but the information is not always arriving here.  However, the worst problem is that our emails are not reaching everyone (including other team members!) and quite a lot are being marked as spam and eventually being found in the junk box.   Therefore if you've filled in a form or sent us an email and not received a reply from one of The Team within a couple of hours of sending / submitting please check your spam box and if you don;'t find a reply from us either phone us on 01947 896007 or email us again on our backup address of TheCJSTeam@googlemail.com - that one seems to be reaching us.
It seems to have started at the end of last week and been getting steadily worse. 
Our webhosts are looking into it and we have our fingers crossed that it's a simple fix.

Wednesday 13 September 
So it's not a simple fix! 
Email problems continue - not as bad as before, we don't think, but there's still a chance our email  / reply might end up in your spam folder.  We've also had a few emails rejected / quarantined.   

UN International Day of Charity

Charity, like the notions of volunteerism and philanthropy, provides real social bonding and contributes to the creation of inclusive and more resilient societies. Charity can alleviate the worst effects of humanitarian crises, supplement public services in health care, education, housing and child protection. It assists the advancement of culture, science, sports, and the protection of cultural and natural heritage. It also promotes the rights of the marginalized and underprivileged and spreads the message of humanity in conflict situations.
The International Day of Charity was established with the objective of sensitizing and mobilizing people, NGOs, and stakeholders all around the world to to help others through volunteer and philanthropic activities.
The date of 5 September was chosen in order to commemorate the anniversary of the passing away of Mother Teresa of Calcutta, who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 "for work undertaken in the struggle to overcome poverty and distress, which also constitute a threat to peace." There's more about this day here.

Much of the valuable work in the countryside and for our wildlife is carried out by charities, both large and small. CJS supports as many charities as we can, in all sorts of ways, from offering free advertising for jobs and volunteers and coverage for their news and events to featuring one charity per year as our 'Featured Charity'. You can find out more about these here.
And for why we offer so much free advertising and keep our advertising rates as low as we possibly can see here. 

If you are interested in volunteering to help out wildlife or the countryside look at what's currently available here; and watch out for the next edition of CJS Focus on Volunteering this one in association with RSPB and is due for publication on Monday 18 September.

Meet the new Data Protection Officers.

Office policy is not to keep your details (personal or financial) for any longer than is absolutely necessary as a result we shred quite a lot of paper, for example when we have to write down the details for card transactions the paperwork is shredded as soon as the payment has been processed. The tax man insists we keep the office accounts for eight years, it gives us a lot of loft insulation! And this year we have been shredding the accounts and paperwork from the year ending March 2009 which generates bags and bags of paper streamers which our local recycler won't take. 

So what can we do with it all?

Some of it is used in compost bins layering it between grass clippings. We did try converting it into paper 'logs' to burn but it generated a huge amount of ash and hardly any heat so that one was quickly abandoned. Now most it goes to the newly adopted "Data Protection Officers"  Meet Zinzan and Whizz

Yep, they're Guinea pigs and shredded paper is perfect bedding for them.  Our previous 'Pig' was mentioned in our Environmental Policy:  "All the paper used to produce your copy of CJS is 100% recycled and when you write to us your letters are recycled too, with one exception for security if we have any paper copies of details from the database (your name & address etc) or have written down your credit card details these are shredded and then used as bedding for livestock before being composted – not much chance of identity theft from that, however, if you find a small brown guinea pig is using your card details to buy carrots you’ll know we were wrong! "  I think we need to update that to a brown & white, and grey (technically an agouti) guinea pig and their favourite is not carrots but, as you can see, corn on the cob!

CJS Vacancies advertised in August

Use the links to see each sector online.

Administration, support and IT	20	all administration and support roles.
Arboriculture	22	working with and for trees, woodland and in forestry, includes tree nursery.
Community and Volunteers	17	projects looking at community involvement and countryside volunteer management.
Countryside	68	Ranger posts, including those in greenspace and urban parks and estate workers. You'll also find vacancies for countryside officers, rural policy makers.
Ecology	32	roles covering ecology, biodiversity, mitigation, consultancy roles e.g. Ecological Clerk of Works and advice provision also fieldwork such as bat surveys and EIA.
Environmental and outdoor education	38	interpretation, field work tutors, public engagement, adventure activities instructors also higher and further education roles.
Horticulture	24	gardening and plant health vacancies.
Fundraising and Publicity	23	public relations, promotion including social media, grant applications and administration and fundraising. This section also includes membership promotion and recruitment roles.
Rights of Way	0	access and all public rights of way related work.
Visitor Management	3	visitor services and management including event management.
Wildlife work and animal care	18	wildlife projects dealing with one specific species, working with animals such as wildlife hospital workers. also animal handling e.g. zoos and aviculture.

To access all of these adverts you need to subscribe to our Weekly newsletter which also has details of voluntary (61 adverts) and apprenticeship (6 adverts) roles, news for each week, monthly calendars of training and professional events as well as details for forthcoming practical work days and conservation tasks plus lots of other industry relevant information.

• Find out more here
• Request a sample copy
• Subscribe here
• Gain instant access for one week including back issues.

There was a bit of drizzle!!

You might have seen footage of yesterday's flash floods in Scarborough and Leeds on the national news (BBC report here.)
It didn't exactly miss us!

Pony class in the murk with a handful of observers.

But the show went on regardless, it was only a bit of water after all.

Amy said: "We arrived just as the heavens opened and I knew it wasn’t just a shower so we just got out and got wet. Sheds and tents were filled with people sheltering, other tents were closed for judging."

The mud was about 2inch deep and there were plenty of unfortunates who had small shoes on, which was entertaining.  Show veterans know wellies are essential and for smaller people full waterproof (hoseable) overalls are a good idea.

It was belting down so much we couldn’t get the camera out when it was really coming down as it would have got drenched and probably stopped working so not many pictures for you.

But the tents were nice and sort of dry-ish although photos were a bit difficult until the rain stopped and the hoards streamed back out again.

Delightful prize-winning dahlias

 Lovely day!  Roll on next year... (dry please - pretty please with a sou'wester on top)

A day out.

We take our annual holiday tomorrow (Wednesday 23 August) to go to the Egton Show the local agricultural show.  Forecast is looking pretty wet and it has been raining quite a lot over the last few weeks so we're expecting it to be a bit muddy.
We'll think about you as we wander round eating our bacon butties and ice cream, gazing at goats and keeping our hands firmly in our pockets as we look at the wares on display in the Brigantia tent (local crafts).
Back to 'normal' on Thursday.

It's World Photography Day

Inspiring Positive Impact Through Photography

At World Photo Day, we believe in the power of photography to inspire positive impact in our communities. By bringing together millions of photographers around the world, we’re connecting people in a global celebration that invests back into our local and global communities.

https://worldphotoday.com/about/

Want to improve your photography skills? Then have a look at the photography courses specifically for countryside professionals listed on the Training Directory here: https://www.countryside-jobs.com/Training/short-courses/photo

For inspiration have a look at the British Wildlife Photography Awards, this year's competition is now closed and the winners will be announced soon but previous winners are available to view.  These wonderful images may give you an idea or prompt you to pick up your camera capturing a potentially winning shot for you to enter next year (competition opens in February).   www.bwpawards.org

Thank you for completing our survey - this is what you did!

Thanks to everyone who took the time to complete our short survey earlier this year.  We've now sponsored some trees with the Woodland Trust and provided a home or two for dormice with PTES.

Watch out for our big reader survey coming this autumn with chances to win lots of goodies and by taking part we'll sponsor / adopt more good things.

CJS Professional: August edition

The latest edition of CJS Professional is now online, read it in full here: www.countryside-jobs.com/Professional/current.htm   You may need to refresh your browser.

Jobs advertised in this Month's edition:
Policy Officer, Greater Lincolnshire Nature Partnership based Horncastle (12 month contract)
Ecologist/Senior Ecologist, Derbyshire, Peak Ecology
Biodiversity Internship, Inspiring Healthy Lifestyles based Robin Park Headquarters but work flexibly across Wigan borough (fixed term to 31/3/18)
Assistant Partnership Officer, North West Kent Countryside Partnership (1yr, 29.3hpw)
Estate Ranger, Leeds Castle (Kent)
Senior Ecological Consultant, ADAS (Kent)
Mendip Hills Countryside Stewardship Facilitator, Somerset Wildlife Trust based Cheddar (4yrs, 3dpw)
Estate Manager, Islay Estates Company
Landscape Adviser, Cairngorms National Park Authority, National Park Headquarters, Grantown on Spey (22.5 hours per week Job Share)
Senior Land / Environmental Management Consultant, ADAS (Oxford)
Head of Operations, Nene Park Trust Peterborough

CJS Notices
CJS Focus on Volunteering in association with RSPB
Time to send us your adverts for Volunteers
Have you found yourself short of a few helping hands this summer?  Do need an assistant at the teddy bear's picnic or someone to check the cattle on the furthest edge of the reserve?  Or maybe just someone to pop in and count the donations in the charity boxes?
The next edition of CJS Focus will be looking at Volunteering once again, this time in association with RSPB. Articles from: A Focus on Nature, Canal & River Trust, Countryside Management Association, East Ayrshire Leisure, Scottish Countryside Rangers Association, Woodland Trust, Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust.  The deadline for advertising is 9 September. 
More Information, and submit your adverts (free options available) here.

Details of additions to Surveys and Fieldwork section, 5 new listings this month
Surveys and Citizen Science: . Click here to see additions made during May.


Top headlines from the past month: Click here to read

Training Calendar Click here to read
Short Courses and Events in October  19 pages
Send information about your training courses today to training@countryside-jobs.com or submit online here. 

Print length this edition: 85
That's a lot to read however CJS Professional is set so that you can skim the headers and pick out the articles that are appropriate for you or use the links above to go direct to each section. and now with navigation at the top of the edition.

The next edition of CJS Professional will be published on: 14 September
Got something to share or want to advertise? The deadline is: 5pm Monday 11 September
Contact us by email: ranger@countryside-jobs.com