About

I am a naturalist and conservationist with a life-long ambition to protect and reinstate spaces for wildlife, whilst educating and encouraging others to do the same. I write this blog as a self-learning platform, as well as to educate and inspire others.


Born and raised in the UK, most of my work has been based in England and Wales, however I have also been fortunate enough to work abroad in the Kalahari Desert of South Africa and on the coastline and in the Mediterranean Sea around Malta. As the daughter of two archaeologists, I grew up with the great outdoors as my playground so I am unfazed when it comes to getting my hands dirty. During my childhood, my favourite pastimes included pond dipping in the inundated wood near my house and dissecting owl pellets in the bathroom sink... today not much has changed. I am fascinated by, and keen to conserve all things wild, however I am particularly interested in mammals, amphibians, pollinators and plants.

In order to pursue my career of choice, I studied for a Bachelor's degree in Zoology at Swansea University (2013-2016), before completing a Master's degree in Conservation Science at Imperial College London in 2017. For my Master's thesis I researched water vole preferences towards various riparian management strategies implemented by the Middle Level Commissioners of the Cambridgeshire and Norfolk Fens. After the completion of this thesis, the Middle Level Commissioners employed me for a six-month position (November 2017 - May 2018) as Assistant to the Environmental Officer. This role was enormously fulfilling, and introduced me to an array of conservation skills, and opened my eyes to the richness of the Fenland flora and fauna.

Since finishing my six-month position in the Fens, I have been working as a Wildlife Conservation Trainee at College Lake Nature Reserve (Buckinghamshire). The reserve is managed by the Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire Wildlife Trust (BBOWT) and is situated on the site of a disused quarry. Today, it is hard to believe that the site was once a working quarry - orchids and other wild flowers cover the grasslands between April and June, and wetland birds flock to the lake all year round.



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Voles on rolls

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Where to begin...  It's been four years since I last wrote a blog post and I feel that it's about time that I started with a clean slate. Those that used to follow my blog back in 2012/2013 may recall my pre-university Kalahari* Desert adventures. I spent six months working at the Kalahari* Meerkat Project assisting with the day-to-day recording of meerkat behaviour and life history data. Since then I have completed a Bachelor's degree in Zoology at Swansea University and a Master's degree in Conservation Science at Imperial College London. It was the search for a suitable MSc thesis project which drew me to the Fens* of Cambridgeshire; where I'm now employed as Assistant to the Environmental Officer of the Middle Level Commissioners.         *Some technical terms, geographical locations and other explanatory information           are listed in a glossary at the foot of the page. For my thesis project, I researched the effectiveness...
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ADA Gazette Spring 2018 Issue

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I'm chuffed to have my recent MSc water vole research mentioned in the Association of Drainage Authorities magazine the ADA Gazette !  I hope that water voles (the most rapidly declining native British mammal) in other parts of the UK can benefit from my Fenland research regarding their preference for coir roll revetments over other riparian management strategies. Cheers to Cliff Carson (Environmental Officer of the Middle Level Commissioners and MSc thesis supervisor) for writing the article and to the Association of Drainage Authorities for including it. The article (right hand side) printed on page 23 in the ADA Gazette Spring 2018 Issue. To discover more about my research findings, check out the summary report which is downloadable from the Middle Level Commissioners website .
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A sad otter's tale

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The purpose of this post is to raise awareness about otter road casualties and illegal or unintended trapping. Last week (9th January) saw the tragic death of a beautiful Eurasian otter ( Lutra lutra ). It was on my way to the Middle Level Commissioners (MLC) offices in March (Cambridgeshire) that I spotted the corpse on the side of a busy main road and I pulled over to take a look. Once I had reached the otter, I realised that it was probably a relatively young animal, since it wasn't much bigger than a domestic cat. The hind feet of the otter corpse (09/01/2018). With a pang of sadness (otters are one of my favourite animals), I saw that it had a head wound, most likely from a collision with a car. The pool of blood in which the otter lay was relatively fresh and very little smell issued from the body, indicating that it had not been there long, probably around 48 hours. A closer inspection of the animal revealed that its abdomen was slightly swollen and tha...
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