Time is rapidly running out for the red squirrel in Scotland, pushed out of its habitat and infected with a deadly virus carried by the non native grey squirrel. Private landowners, conservation charities, voluntary groups and government bodies are now coming together within two major complimentary projects to try and maintain healthy populations of red squirrels in Scotland into the future.

Project Officer North East–Saving Scotland’s Red Squirrels

£21k to £24k depending on experience

Location: SNH Aberdeen

Fixed term to end March 2012, but with possibility of extension

35 hours per week

The Scottish Wildlife Trust, Scottish Natural Heritage, Forestry Commission Scotland and Scottish Rural Property and Business Association, with support from local squirrel groups across Scotland, are implementing a major project to help conserve Scotland's red squirrel population.

Employed by SWT, the successful candidate will oversee work to reduce the threats to red squirrel populations both in rural Aberdeenshire and Aberdeen City, by co-ordinating an established programme of grey squirrel control, conducting surveys and overseeing volunteer delivery of surveys, promoting good practice in red squirrel conservation to woodland owners and managers and the general public, and collating data to facilitateevaluation of project methods.

Working in partnership with land and estate managers, Forestry Commission Scotland, Scottish Natural Heritage, AberdeenUniversity and local volunteer groups,the Project Officer willprovide management advice to landowners, co-ordinate grey squirrel population control and manage the activities of grey squirrel controllers.

Part of the job will be to engage with the public to engender support for the project. The successful candidate will promote the project to stakeholders and engage with the local and national media.

Applicants will hold a degree or equivalent vocational qualification in countryside management or related discipline, and demonstrate species conservation management experience, ideally with practical experience of mammal and woodland management.

Experience of working withthe public, private landowners, conservation agencies and volunteer groups along with excellent interpersonal, presentation and organisational skills are essential.

This post requires working in remote locations in challenging environments. A project vehicle will be provided therefore a current driving licence is essential.

For further information and an application form please see email , or phone 0131 312 7765.

Closing date for applications is23March; interviews week beginning 28March or 4 April.

The Scottish Wildlife Trust is committed to equal opportunities.

This project is being part-financed by the Scottish Government and European Community Rural

Aberdeenshire LEADER 2007-2013 Programme and the Aberdeen Greenspace Trust.

Job Title: Saving Scotland’s Red Squirrels

Project Officer North East Scotland

Location of Job / SNH Offices, Torry, Aberdeen
Dept/Region / Conservation/regional
Reporting to / SWT’s Saving Scotland’s Red Squirrels Project Manager

Overall purpose of the job

To coordinate and help implement the Saving Scotland’s Red Squirrels project across North East Scotland

Organisation

The PO will be line managed by the Project Manager of the Saving Scotland’s Red Squirrels project.

Main duties

Strategy and organisation
  • Liaise with Project Manager, other Project Officers and external stakeholders to deliver the priorities as outlined in the Saving Scotland’s Red Squirrels project plan.
  • Liaise with the Grampian Red Squirrels steering group
  • Liaise with a range of conservation and landowner organisations to co-ordinate delivery of project aims.
  • Liaise with Grampian Squirrel Group,other volunteer local squirrel groups and national and regional stakeholders
Project Duties
  • Help deliver a regional red squirrel conservation strategy as outlined in the Saving Scotland’s Red Squirrels project plan.
  • Co-ordinate the control of grey squirrels in key areas of Aberdeenshire and Aberdeen Cityto create a co-ordinated grey squirrel control network.
  • Responsible for the management of at least 3 year-round and 2 seasonal grey squirrel control staff and contractors and co-ordination of their activities. Responsible for the management of a Future Jobs Fund assistant.
  • Assist eligible land owners/managers with SRDP applications to access funding for grey squirrel control as part of a co-ordinated grey squirrel control network in North East Scotland.
  • Manage a project trap-loan scheme to assist land managers to carry out grey squirrel control in a co-ordinated control network in North East Scotland.
  • Carry out annual surveys in accordance with the SSRS programme to monitor broad trends in squirrel abundance and distribution and, in particular, to monitor the effects of grey squirrel control.
  • Recruit, train and co-ordinate the activities of volunteers to assist with annual surveys and, where appropriate, grey squirrel control.
  • Liaise with land owners/managers in target areas to manage their woodland to favour red squirrels. Draw up site-specific management recommendations for these woodlands where required.
  • Coordinate production of maps and statistics and report on trapping effort, control totals, landowner co-operation, squirrel distributions and other key information and report these quarterly to the SWT Data Officer; collate figures on trapping effort and results from SNH-employed controllers for the period August 2007 to August 2009.
  • Promote the recording of squirrel distribution records in North East Scotland and contribute these to the SWT Data Officer.
Public Relations
  • Undertake publicity to promote understanding of red squirrel conservation and grey squirrel control and to encourage recording and reporting of squirrel sightings.
  • Produce promotional literature and updates for project websites and take on the responsibility for progressing the production of publicity materials for the SSRS project as a whole.
  • Provide talks, guided walks and attend events to promote conservation of red squirrels

Key internal & external contacts

  • Project Manager Saving Scotland’s Red Squirrels
  • SWT Data Officer
  • Scottish Rural Development Programme case Officers
  • SSRS Project Officers for Tayside and Argyll & Trossachs
  • SNH, FCS, SRPBA
  • Landowners and managers and groups representing them

Personal specification

Qualifications, training, knowledge and experience
Essential qualifications
  • Degree or equivalent vocational qualification in ecology/countryside management or related discipline
Experience
  • Minimum two years previous experience in a relevant field and proven countryside management or ecological field skills
  • Experience of project development and implementation
  • Proven track record in PR and working with the media
  • Experience working with external partners and the public
  • Experience of working with community groups and volunteers
  • Staff management experience

Special competencies, skills and abilities
Essential
  • Good organisational skills: ability to plan and deliver work to deadlines and to monitor progress against targets, with the drive and focus to see that project targets on data collection in the North East are met
  • Highly motivated and able to motivate others,
  • Excellent interpersonal skills; ability to communicate with colleagues, stakeholders and the wider public
  • Knowledge of Scottish wildlife and environment issues, particularly relating to mammals
  • Ability to work on own initiative and manage own time-table with minimal supervision
  • Ability to access and work in woodland sites, some of which are remote
  • Full clean driving license
  • Willing to work some evenings and weekends.

Advantageous
  • Good writing and reporting skills
  • Knowledge of forestry/woodland management or practical woodland management skills
  • Experience of mammal population management
  • Knowledge of current legislation relating to mammals
  • Experience of working with countryside rangers, gamekeepers or similar
  • Experience of contract management

Date / 14 November 2018
Author / Dr Mel Tonkin
Position / Project Manager – Saving Scotland’s Red Squirrels

PROJECT SUMMARY

The red squirrel is a conservation priority for the UK and Scotland. It is imperative to secure red squirrel populations in all the areas they currently occupy, whilst encouraging expansion into some of their former range. This project begins this process. Within the timescale of this project we aim to complete the first phase of this by arresting population contraction in large areas of North East Scotland and upland Scotland north of the central belt,developing the methodology and mechanisms by which red squirrels can be protected more widely, providing a basis for successful expansion in the future. This project will run alongside (and have close links with) the established Red Squirrels in South Scotland project to provide a targeted national programme.

The rapid and continuing loss of red squirrels throughout much of the UK has been well documented. It is clear that the chief threat to the red squirrel is competition with the more robust non-native grey squirrel, including the fatal disease, squirrelpox, carried and spread by grey squirrels to red squirrels. The virus causing squirrelpox has been detected in the Scottish Borders and Dumfries-shire, and it is imperative to stop it from spreading further if red squirrels are to survive on the Scottish mainland into the latter half of the century. At the same time it is necessary to secure the red squirrel in areas such as Aberdeenshire, the Highlands, northern Tayside and Argyll where there are currently no grey squirrels present, and to work to improve conditions for viable red squirrel populations right across Scotland.

An essential part of the project is to review progress and evaluate the role of this type of conservation action in protecting red squirrels over the longer-term. The outcomes of the project will influence the future scale and direction of efforts to retain healthy populations of red squirrels across a large part of Scotland.

The current project is in year 3 of a three-year phase and is a partnership project between Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH), The Scottish Wildlife Trust (SWT), Forestry Commission Scotland (FCS) and Scottish Rural Property & Business Association (SRPBA). SWT employs a project team consisting of a Project Manager, Red Squirrel Project Officers and Grey Squirrel Control Officers. A steering group comprising the above partners oversees delivery and reporting of the project.

PROJECT VISION

Thriving red squirrel populations in the Highlands, Argyll, North-East Scotland and northern Tayside that are protected from replacement by grey squirrelsand enhanced red squirrel populations across Scotland.

THREE-YEAR PROJECT AIMS

  • To put in place the mechanisms, structures and organisational co-operation to sustain effective red squirrel protection for the Highlands, Argyll, North-East Scotland and northern Tayside;
  • To improve access of private and public woodland owners to information and advice on best practice in woodland and forestry management for red squirrels;
  • To increase the involvement of private and public foresters and woodland owners in conservation efforts for red squirrels;
  • To increase our knowledge of the distribution of squirrels in Scotland and maintain a process for recording and disseminating this information;
  • To increase community engagement in red squirrel conservation.

The project has four components:

1. Control of grey squirrels

  • Undertaking grey squirrel control in key locations to reduce the most significant immediate and long term threat posed red squirrels in the Highlands, Argyll, North-East Scotland and northern Tayside;
  • Undertaking control of grey squirrels in the vicinity of Forestry Commission Red Squirrel Strongholds where necessary;
  • Encouraging landowner and community involvement in reducing grey squirrel presence in and around control areas by assisting with Rural Development Contract grant applications, by developing trap loan schemes and providing training in grey squirrel control;
  • Promoting an understanding of the need for grey squirrel control to the wider community;
  • Contributing to the Red Squirrels in South Scotland Project.

2. Management of forests for red squirrels

  • Providing advice on red squirrel-friendly forest management and assistance with applications to landowners eligible for funding through the Scottish Rural Development Programmeto maximise the benefit of their forests for red squirrels;
  • Producingsite-specific red squirrel management recommendations to feed into new or revised forest plans.

3. Survey and Monitoring

  • Undertakingstandardised surveys and implement monitoring practices to determine the impact of the project activities on squirrel populations;
  • Undertaking targeted public campaigns in grey squirrel control zones to raise awareness of red squirrel conservation issues and to encourage the recording of red and grey squirrels;
  • Maintaining widespread recording and a web-based recording scheme for submission of red and grey squirrel records from across Scotland;
  • Updating all incoming distribution records onto the Scottish Squirrel Database, including data collected from local records centres, and providing summaries and mapping of updated data for stakeholders and the wider public.

4. Sharing best practise

  • In association with FCS, producing current woodland management advice bringing together all advice in a format that is easily accessible to private forest and woodland owners and managers, and ensuring that it is widely available;
  • Develop partnerships with landowner and land manager groups, private foresters, local biodiversity action partnerships, local authorities, countryside rangers, other conservation bodies, gamekeeper groups, shooting and fishing groups, community groupsto share information for the benefit of red squirrel conservation
  • Produce mobile interpretation displays for use at countryside events and for circulation round local authority libraries
  • Maintain a project website to provide information on management and distribution of squirrels
  • Undertake public education events to bring an awareness of red squirrel conservation issues to the wider community
  • Produce articles and information for the press and national and local magazines to publicise the project and its aims to the wider public.
  • Identify 3 commercial forest sites, and seek management agreements with owners, where red squirrel conservation measures can be applied in order to demonstrate the benefits to red squirrels of the policies and practices currently available

This project is being part-financed by the Scottish Government and European Community Rural Aberdeenshire LEADER 2007-2013 Programme and the Aberdeen Greenspace Trust.

Saving Scotland’s Red Squirrels / Summary / 1

FURTHER INFORMATION

The red squirrel was one of the first species identified for conservation action under the UK Biodiversity Action Plan in 1995. It has been estimated that around 75% of the UK population is now to be in found in Scotland (c. 121,000 animals) and in 1998 the Scottish Squirrel Group drew up a Scottish Strategy for Red Squirrel Conservation. This was updated and re-launched in January 2004. Of the six threats to red squirrels listed in the Strategy, competition from the introduced grey squirrel was first, followed by disease transmitted by the grey squirrel

A third threat identified was the change in woodland habitat brought about by extensive replacement of felled Scots pine and Norway spruce plantations with new plantations of Sitka spruce. This habitat offers a limited and unpredictable supply of food for red squirrels. The change is understood to be a mixed blessing, as the poor quality of Sitka spruce for red squirrels is offset by the greater difficulty encountered by the larger grey squirrel in living in this habitat. This potentially makes plantations with a large proportion of Sitka spruce the one habitat where red squirrels can generally out-compete greys.

The fourth major threat identified in the Scottish Strategy was conflict with other management objectives. Advice on habitat management for red squirrel conservation given in the Forestry Commission’s Practice Note 5 recommends large areas of conifer and avoidance of mixing large-seeded broadleaved trees such as oak, beech or hazel. This recommendation has the potential to conflict with other biodiversity conservation aims and so cannot necessarily be implemented everywhere. To address this, work was done in 2002-2004 to identify woodlands for red squirrel conservation in Scotland. This was based on squirrel distribution, woodland size and composition, site defendability, site management and socio-economic considerations. The result was a list of 150 Priority Woodlands for red squirrel conservation, which were recommended as the forests where red squirrel conservation action would provide the most sustainable benefits.

In 2006 a programme of conservation action for the red squirrel in Scotland was set out in the Scottish Red Squirrel Action Plan 2006-2011by a government working group. One of the Key Actions is to identify a subset of the Priority Woodlands, the “Stronghold Sites”, which are to be managed as refuge sites for red squirrels. In 2007 Forestry Commission Scotland began a process In 2007 Forestry Commission Scotland began a process to identify 20 large functionally connected forest networks destined to become the red squirrel “Stronghold Sites” by a parallel process to the Priority Woodland selection. The process is not yet complete, but the Strongholds are likely to include many of the forests identified as Priority Woodlands in the earlier process. Each Stronghold network will have detailed red squirrel conservation plans drawn up to feed into forest design planning and bring about large-scale habitat improvements for red squirrels. Strongholds will be identified to local authorities as priority sites for red squirrels where damage to the habitat should be avoided. This work is subject to public consultation

The red squirrel is also listed as one of the priority species in the SNH A Five Year Species Action Framework:Making a difference for Scotland's species(2007), along with the grey squirrel as an invasive non-native species. This recommends proactive grey squirrel control in strategic, targeted areas informed by the identification of natural barriers and pinch-points. Recent work by NewcastleUniversity, commissioned by SNH, modelled woodland distribution and potential grey squirrel dispersal routes to identify a number of natural barriers and potential pinch-points.