6497 - Senior Reserve Manager, Ingleborough National Nature Reserve

Join us in shaping a future where nature and people thrive. Whether you're drawn to hands-on conservation or playing a vital part behind the scenes, your work at Natural England will support lasting benefits for the environment and society. 

Our Role

Natural England is the Government’s adviser for the natural environment and the Nature regulator with a wide range of statutory duties and powers. We provide the evidence, expertise and advice to recover Nature and shape better places for people to live. We do this working through and with others. 

Strategic Outcomes for Nature

Our strategy is framed through four strategic outcomes. Each of these outcomes reinforces and amplifies the others, and together they address environmental, social and economic actions critical to thriving nature. 

• Recovering Nature – Increased scale and quality of places where nature thrives. 
• Building Better Places – Greener homes and infrastructure create healthier, more investable places, recognising we live better where nature thrives around us. 
• Improving Health and Wellbeing – Build nature into everyday life so people can support, access and benefit from nature, wherever they live. 
• Delivering Security through Nature – Nature helps us adapt to the threats of a changing climate and improves our national security, supporting more resilient food production, healthy soils, clean and plentiful water and clean air. 

Find out more about the work of Natural England at: 
Natural England’s Strategy: Recovering Nature for Growth, Health and Security - GOV.UK

Senior Reserve Manager - Role and Purpose

The Yorkshire and Northern Lincolnshire Area Team plays a central role in delivering Natural England’s mission across some of the most ecologically significant and culturally treasured landscapes in the country. Within this area, Ingleborough National Nature Reserve stands out as a flagship site – an exceptional upland environment where rare habitats, species recovery and landscape scale conservation come together.

The Senior Reserve Manager will lead and support a skilled practical conservation team of staff and volunteers who are responsible for managing a diverse and dynamic landscape, from limestone pavements and upland hay meadows to montane habitats and important species assemblages. They will have responsibility for their own Health & Safety and that of staff, visitors, volunteers, contractors on the reserve.

Working closely with colleagues across Natural England, as well as local partners, landowners, researchers and community stakeholders, the Senior Reserve Manager will provide strategic direction to shape the future of the reserve. They will engage the with wider area team and organisation – helping to shape policy and future direction. Their focus will be on long term ecological restoration, underpinned by evidence-based decision making and innovative approaches to nature recovery.
This includes driving forward partnership-based conservation, contributing to an emerging landscape recovery scheme, and preparing for the development of a new reserve base that will strengthen the reserve’s operational capability and its presence within the local community.

Our National Nature Reserves (NNRs) are at the forefront of nature recovery and people engagement and are at the heart of achieving Natural England’s ambitions. This role is fundamental to the delivery of the NNR Management plans objectives and the ambitions of NNRs providing key operational delivery on the reserves, thereby ensuring the NNR series can achieve its role in delivering the Government’s ambitious 25-year plan.

Job description

This position is based at the Ingleborough National Nature Reserve base (Colt Park) within the Yorkshire and Northern Lincolnshire area team.

Key Tasks/Principal Accountabilities

Management Planning – Development and Implementation

• Strategic leadership and coordination of Management Plan reviews across the Ingleborough NNR cluster, developing the operational plan for their reserves, setting the priorities for the years ahead. Includes identifying and liaising with relevant specialists and internal and external stakeholders to deliver the review process.
• Secure the staff and financial resourcing needed to deliver the management plan priorities, facilitate teamwork across the NNR group and wider NE colleagues to deliver our collective aims in those plans.
• Identify and help to manage strategic risks to delivery of the management plan in the immediate or longer term.