This newness is very different to most of the other things I have been a part of since working here – things which have been running for years – and it was quite refreshing to be there for the beginning of something for once!

The specialisms of the speakers were very wide ranging, mostly covering topics in wildlife research and law, and we also had the first report from WAWC’s major review of UK wild animal welfare issues.

In the three(ish) months I’ve been here, I’ve done quite a lot of work with the Marine Trainees and have been lucky enough recently to have been a bit involved with their final project here: ‘The Waste Beneath Our Waves’, an exhibition of sculptures created from marine litter found on the beach at South Walney.

A promotional video needed to be made for the project, and it was decided that instead of hiring someone to make this on our behalf, the Trainees would go through video and photography training and make the video themselves. I had this training too and helped sculpt the finished product. I also made my own ‘litter critter’, a sun star, which will be available to view along with the film at the exhibition in a couple of weeks!

As I’ve probably mentioned before, I’ve always loved and cared about the natural environment but my knowledge of actual wildlife is not brilliant. Luckily for me this continues to be improved while I’m here at the Trust! Isaac and I both went on a brilliant wading bird ID course run by Mike Douglas. He’s a great teacher whose evident passion is contagious. We did a knowledge test before and after the training to see how our knowledge had improved –I will begrudgingly disclose that in my first test I got ONE correct answer. In the second I got 22! So I’m hopefully all set for the bird surveys we will be taking over when the Marine Trainees sadly leave.

November turned into the month of capital cities – as well as Edinburgh for the WAWC conference I travelled down to London for the Our Bright Future steering group. In brief: Our Bright Future is a £33m HLF scheme, with 31 projects across the U.K, and one of these projects is Yorkshire Dales Millennium Trust’s Green Futures, an environmental apprenticeship scheme which is where our apprenticeships come from!

Together with another YDMT apprentice Jack (his apprenticeship is with Yorkshire Dales National Park), we acted as ambassadors for Green Futures and met people from other OBF projects, as well as helping launch a social media campaign to try and engage young people with the environment.