New Forest Assistant Reserves Officer

New Forest Assistant Reserves Officer

Full Time – 35 Hours per Week
Salary: £25,390 gross per annum
Permanent Contract
Location: New Forest area, with work primarily taking place at Roydon or Blashford Lakes

Hampshire & Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust is shaping a wilder future for our counties – protecting special places, restoring habitats and inspiring people to act for nature. As part of the UK’s fastest-growing movement for nature’s recovery, we lead with passion, integrity and bold thinking. Join a team where your work has purpose, your ideas matter, and you can help create lasting change for wildlife and people.

We are seeking a New Forest Assistant Reserves Officer to join our cause.

The New Forest Assistant Reserves Officer will be assisting in practical management and biological surveying of a suite of nature reserves across the Trust’s New Forest land holding. These sites hold significant wildlife value and cover a broad range of habitat types, priority species and management requirements.

This post is aimed at individuals who wish to pursue a career in the environmental sector with a focus on habitat and nature reserve management. In-house and external training will be provided to develop the successful candidate.

What you’ll be doing:

You will support Estates colleagues across a range of activities including habitat management, livestock management, operating and maintaining machinery and power tools, leading volunteer groups, contractor management and biological surveying.

About you:

You’ll be joining a team of passionate and enthusiastic about nature conservation delivering a varied work programme. You will have experience in the sector and will be ticketed and experienced in the use of a variety of tools and machinery.

Wild About Inclusion!

As an inclusive employer we recognise that our workforce needs to better reflect the communities in which we live and work. We encourage applications from all sections of the community, particularly those underrepresented within our sector, including people from black, Asian, minority Ethnic backgrounds and people with disabilities. We are committed to creating a Movement that recognises and truly values individual differences and identities.

Disability Confident.

We are proudly a Disability Confident Committed employer. The scheme is helping us recruit and retain great people to meet our workforce needs. As a member of the scheme, we will ensure that a fair and proportionate number of disabled applicants that meet the minimum criteria for this position will be offered an interview. You can request adjustments including accessible formats of this vacancy by emailing [email protected].

To be considered for an interview under the Disability Confident Scheme you must:

• Identify as being disabled which under the Equality Act 2010 means a physical or mental impairment which has a substantial*, long term** adverse effect on your ability to carry out normal day to day activities; or a long-term health condition; and;

(*Substantial is more than minor or trivial **Long-term means 12 months or more)

• Set out how you meet all the minimum qualifying criteria set out in the person specification for the post at the application and testing stages. This is a requirement for all candidates, not just those applying under the scheme.

We offer a wide range of benefits including a competitive salary, generous annual leave allowance, a contributory pension scheme, life assurance, learning and development support, 24-hour access to our employee assistance programme, discounted staff travel with our corporate partners Wightlink (subject to T&Cs), free parking at our sites and more.

Closing date: 05 August 2026
Interviews: 18 August 2026

Please note that we may occasionally close vacancies early when we have received enough applications that meet the required criteria.

Please do not use artificial intelligence tools to assist you to complete the application form. We may not accept applications that have been completed utilising AI tools. If you would usually use tools such as these to assist you in filling in a form, please contact [email protected] to discuss this further and understand other options.