Thames to Lincolnshire: Mink Control Project Officer in Essex

The Waterlife Recovery Trust

The Trust is a charity, registered in 2022, with origins in the Waterlife Recovery East (WRE)
project. WRE started in 2018 when partners from the long running East Anglian Mink and Water
Vole Group joined with others from the fields of wildlife conservation, water management, game
shooting and fishing. All shared the goal of bringing life back to the waterways and wetlands
of East Anglia, through the removal of one highly damaging invasive, non-native species: the
American Mink Neogale vison.

The original WRE project had three linked objectives:

• to humanely control mink throughout East Anglia,
• to see if eradication was possible at a wide geographical scale,
• to develop and spread the use of best practice for mink control.

Underpinning this was the vision that an effective model could be developed which could then be
used to promote mink control, and ultimately eradication, throughout Great Britain. The
Waterlife Recovery Trust was formed to help make this vision a reality by facilitating the
development of a ‘family’ of catchment-based mink projects working throughout the country.

With support from our partners and hundreds of citizen scientist volunteers we have been able
to show that eradication is achievable using trapping alone. We now need to encourage others to
be part of the family and together roll out best practice across the country.

Job Overview

A full-time fixed term post is available in Essex for a period ending on 31 March 2025. The
employer is the Waterlife Recovery Trust, and the post is funded through a grant to Essex
Wildlife Trust from Highways England. It is an element of a wide scale water vole recovery
project funded under Natural England’s Species Recovery Programme. If follow-on funding is
secured, the post may be renewable. The purpose of the project is to remove invasive American
mink from an area stretching from the Thames to Lincolnshire*, to protect endangered water
voles and other native wildlife and allow their populations to recover. It will be one of six
similar posts covering the project area. The post-holder will develop a mink control network
across ‘their area’ using ‘smart’ mink traps monitored by volunteers. The project will use
adaptive management techniques to maximise efficiency; the ‘best practice’ for humane mink
trapping developed to date is detailed on the WRT website.

The post will be home-based, ideally in an appropriate location in central to east Essex
suitable to cover the county. The Project Officer (PO) will be expected to use their own
vehicle for travel and moving equipment but receive a mileage rate for doing so. Flexibility in
working hours will be key; this is not a 9-5 weekday office job. Although you will not be
expected to exceed 40 hours a week on average, some weeks will be busier than others. At least
a few minutes of web-based work will be needed every day, including at weekends, to support
volunteers with any problems and to ensure that our work is always carried out to the highest
animal welfare standards.

All necessary training will be provided.

*The Project Area is an area of some 8600 km2 (about 10.2 % of England) in an arc around
Norfolk, Suffolk, and Cambridgeshire. It includes all or part of the counties of Essex, Greater
London, Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, Northamptonshire, Rutland, and Lincolnshire.

How to apply

More information on the Trust, the roles, and how to apply is available from our website.