Written by Kerryn Humphreys, Managing Editor, Countryside Jobs Service.
In the early years we talked about conservation but always had to prefix it with nature because in 1994 conservation was mainly for historic buildings. The National Trust had wardens not rangers which meant we sometimes got enquiries about prison wardens! In 1996, the first year for which we have the data, we published 202 jobs for rangers and wardens, by 2025 that had risen to 1680 adverts (not vacancies) more than the total number of vacancies in 1996 (1008). Which just shows how much things have changed. Not only that but large as that number is it was only 17% of all the adverts we published, the range covered by CJS has also changed dramatically.
The sector has seen many changes too, many of them, like CJS, have been a gradual evolution.
Volunteers have always been a vital part of the conservation workforce but were mostly managed on an ad hoc basis by existing staff; dedicated volunteer co-ordinators and managers are a newer introduction. A process speeded up by the introduction of the government’s New Deal in 1998, a workfare programme providing training, subsidised employment and voluntary work for the unemployed that brought with it the need for staff to manage this burgeoning cohort of volunteers and trainees some of whom had never set foot outside of a city park. CJS published the first adverts for New Deal Project Officers in February 1998 and by the end of the year had included 70 vacancies. Most organisations now have a member of staff with responsibility for recruiting, looking after and leading keen volunteer teams.
Support staff are vital to keeping everything running smoothly and again this is an area which has grown with the sector, from a single secretary dealing with bookings and typing up minutes and letters to whole teams with some very specialised duties being recruited. In 2023 a Practice Manager was required to run the administration of an ecological consultancy, the recruit needed to have significant accountancy experience. There are also roles dedicated to sourcing funding and to managing social media, something which simply did not exist in 1994.
There are a few areas where things have not changed so much.
Rights of Way and Access roles experienced a brief increase in response to the introduction of the CROW Act in 2000 as Definitive Maps were drawn up and finalised, however the introduction of technology such as GIS and GPS maps has in many ways made this specialist area less necessary for councils and agencies and numbers of jobs have plateaued. Woodland management and arboriculture are growth fields as we become more aware of the importance of tree planting in our goal of reaching net zero – another term that would have been alien in the early days of CJS when we were talking about the Greenhouse Effect and worrying about ozone holes.
New areas have come along and burgeoned, especially the ecology and biodiversity sector which now forms the second largest group of vacancies we publish.
Today, CJS is about much more than simply jobs, although that is of course at the heart of all we do, look at the website now and you’ll find an all encompassing countryside information service.