Regular volunteering with the Ranger service - Lancashire County Council and Wyre Borough Council

Ranger’s are generally based at information centres and country parks - Beacon Fell, Wyre estuary park and the like. Volunteer rangers have many roles - visitor management, practical work, leading walks, surveying rights of way etc. For information on being a volunteer ranger for Lancashire County Council then follow this link to Lancashire County Council Ranger Service website.

For information about becoming a Countryside Volunteer in Wyre follow this link to the Wyre Countryside Service website and download their excellent ‘Volunteer Opportunities Booklet’.

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The benefits of volunteering

Janice Friend has been a volunteer ranger with Lancashire County Council for a little over a year. Janice started volunteering at Beacon Fell doing one day every fortnight but has done extra days when she could. Initially she volunteered to gain more experience and build a better CV but did the extra days just because she enjoyed doing it anyway. Janice recently applied to the Environment Agency for a place on their Flood and Coastal Risk Engineering Foundation Degree programme with the University of the West of England and was delighted to be accepted. Hundreds of people apply and she is convinced that volunteering and the training and experience she gained helped her get one of the few jobs on offer. (Janice applied the previous year and whilst she didn’t get accepted, she was advised to gain more experience which is exactly what she did). Janice will spend 2 days a week studying and 3 days a week working on real life projects for the Environment Agency during her 2 year Foundation Degree. A change of career for Janice who started out in catering and a fantastic story!

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Regular or casual volunteering with other organisations

BTCV is the country’s largest practical conservation charity. They run practical tasks every week of the year throughout the country called ‘mid week tasks’. Some of these run by their Preston project office are in or around Bowland. In addition, they run conservation holidays all over the UK and abroad. We have a very successful partnership with them to run Conservation Holidays

The RSPB is very active in Bowland and have many volunteers www.rspb.org.uk/volunteering

Lancashire Wildlife Trust work on sites in and near the Forest of Bowland www.lancswt.org.uk

There are many other organisations.

An excellent publication with details of paid and volunteer jobs in the countryside, conservation and environmental sector is the Countryside Jobs Service. www.countryside-jobs.com  They also feature relevant training courses.