I’ve just recently taken on the role of Senior Site Manager at Wild Haweswater, a large partnership project between United Utilities (landowner) and the RSPB in the eastern Lake District. Wild Haweswater aims to ‘renature’ this beautiful part of Cumbria by restoring natural processes such as tree planting, reconnecting rivers to their floodplains, restoring wetlands, and grazing large herbivores. This management also provides a host of public benefits including storing carbon, improving water quality and slowing the flow.

Before the RSPB, I worked for Natural England for over twenty years helping farmers to manage their land for nature through Countryside Stewardship, as an adviser on protected sites, and in the last 6 years as Senior Reserve Manager on two incredible National Nature Reserves in South Cumbria. So I have worked in nature conservation my whole career and loved every minute of it! Although nature reserves are incredibly important for nature conservation, it’s working in partnership at a landscape scale that excites me and is needed if we are going to help nature recover. Coming from a long line of Cumbrian farmers and having grown up on a dairy farm in north Cumbria, I have a deep connection to this corner of the world and seeing the development of some world-class wilding projects in the county fills me with hope for the future!