Volunteer

Events and Community Support

There are lots of opportunities to help out at the Wildlife Trust Countryside Centre and in the local community.

Come along and help out with family and community events. These occur all year round and are a great way to encourage people to get involved and enjoy the great outdoors. 

We are particularly interested to hear from you if you are available Wednesday mornings in term time to assist with our pre-school group Little Bugs! 

Schools Volunteering

Our education programmes are very popular with children and teachers and we often have up to 50 or 60 children at a time from reception age upwards but mainly Key Stages 1 and 2. 

Visits normally run from around 9.30am until 2.30pm and there is some preparation and clearing up time before and after.  We would be grateful of any help you could offer with these visits. 

We would love some help whenever you may be available; if you would like to come along for just one or two school visits or all of them it would be entirely up to you, we don’t ask for any minimum commitment.

The main thing is to inspire and share a love of nature, heritage and wildlife with the children in a fun and interactive way.  And making sure they don’t fall in the pond!  So come along for a chat and get involved; it makes a real difference to children’s lives.

"I volunteer for the Great Fen Education team for many reasons. I have always been passionate about the environment and believe that the children should be given every opportunity to enjoy, explore and understand the environment. I also thoroughly enjoy working with so many enthusiastic people at the Great Fen. I go home after each visit smiling because I've had so much fun."  

Helen, Great Fen Volunteer.

Forest School

We currently offer regular Forest School sessions to primary-age children on Tuesday mornings at the Ramsey Heights nature reserve. If you would like to support these fun and adventurous sessions, training can be provided.

There are fantastic opportunities for young people to gain experience and learn new skills through our Youth Rangers of the Fens group. We meet regularly for young people aged 11-17 to take part in practical conservation tasks and surveys to help wildlife. We meet on a weekend during term-time, with mid-week sessions in school holidays. Sessions take place at Wildlife Trust sites in Peterborough and the Great Fen. For more information, please contact Laura Allen on laura.allen@wildlifebcn.org

Another way young people can take action for wildlife is to join the Young People's Forum. Our Young People's Forum is made up of passionate Wildlife Trust BCN members aged 13-24 from across our three counties. The forum is a motivated group of young voices inspiring action for wildlife. The aim of the group is to help the Trust work better for young people. Join today!

Great Fen Monitors

We have fantastic a team of 60 volunteers engaged in survey and monitoring of the Great Fen, putting a day or two every month. We gather data about plants, insects, amphibians, birds and mammals.

This work helps us to establish base-line data and monitor changes across the Great Fen and fine-tune habitat management techniques.

As we carry out restoration, the wildlife is responding, and it is a very exciting and satisfying process to be involved in monitoring the progress of this Living Landscape. Both experienced naturalists and those new to survey and monitoring are involved, as training is provided. While we are not recruiting at the moment, do check this page from time to time, or our social media, to see if we have any vacancies on the team.

Outdoor Volunteering

We don't currently have any regular work parties active in the Great Fen, but please visit the main Wildlife Trust BCN website to find other opportunities near you. If you're a large group from a business or organisation, you may be interested in our Wild Work Days. 

Volunteer Officers 

We offer Volunteer Officer posts for people looking for a career in wildlife conservation, or in outdoor education and community work. These placements are for 6-9 months, usually 3 days a week. We provide training, both formal and informal to give you career experience in the environment sector. We also provide interview training at the end of your placement. 

These posts come up once or twice a year. There are no current vacancies for Volunteer Officers but we will update this page if this changes.