A peak behind the scenes 

We’d love to introduce ourselves and share how we can help you make a difference for wildlife in your area. Meet your Wilder Lives team who can support your community project in a variety of ways through something called the Wild Network.

What's the Wild Network?

Meet Rachael 
 
Hi everyone! I’m Rachael, and I’m currently the Wilder Lives Manager at Cheshire Wildlife Trust. The Wilder Lives team focus on managing our events and looking after Cheshire's Wild Network. I'm wildlife obsessed and have a particular interest in insects and hedgehogs. 

From a young age, I’ve always loved wildlife. But I was also really interested in art, especially photography. Growing up, although I loved wildlife, I wasn’t sure how to turn that passion into a career. In the end, I chose to study photography at university. After university, I quickly realised the main career options for photographers didn't really fit with what I am interested in. Wedding, fashion and product photography didn’t really appeal to me, so I ended up working in a café in Manchester for a few years.  

Whilst living in Manchester, I began to feel very disconnected from the greenery I’d grown up with in York. At the same time, I noticed how much the natural world around me was changing. I started reading about the decline in wildlife, which gave me the final push to look into a role in conservation. That’s when I came across a traineeship with Yorkshire Wildlife Trust. It was designed for people like me—passionate about wildlife but without direct conservation experience.  

During the traineeship, I learnt so many new skills within the year which gave me the confidence and knowledge I needed to pursue a job in wildlife conservation. Since leaving Yorkshire Wildlife Trust, I've worked at The Conservation Volunteers and in 2021 started at Cheshire Wildlife Trust.  
 
Working for Cheshire Wildlife Trust is great because I am surrounded by people who are just as passionate about wildlife as I am.

It's a great feeling working for a charity that is doing such amazing things to help wildlife across the whole of Cheshire and I feel really proud to be a part of it. 

For more unconventional career paths and advice on how to break into the conservation sector, catch up on our recent webinar!

Watch our webinar on Careers in Conservation

Meet Becky 

Hey! If you’re part of the Wild Network, you might recognise me from my monthly newsletters, Facebook updates or community events. I’m one of the Wilder Lives Officers at Cheshire Wildlife Trust, working to support and encourage the Wild Network in any way I can. 

So how did I get here? It wasn’t until lockdown that I truly reconnected with nature since being a child. Gardening, hiking, and spending more time outdoors opened my eyes—I realised I’d been taking the natural world for granted. As I learned more about the biodiversity and climate crisis, I knew I had to act. A few years ago, I started a youth-led nature campaign in Chester with the goal to help others see what I had come to understand—wildlife is in trouble, and we all have a role to play. 

Through this campaign, I met countless community groups, all dedicated to making a difference in their local areas. Their passion inspired me. As someone who has lived in Cheshire most of my life, I had never felt so connected to and in awe of the place I call home. These groups gave me hope and it cemented my desire to change career all together and work in the environmental sector.

I was fortunate to land a traineeship with Learning through Landscapes, where I taught themes like climate change and soil degradation to children in primary schools across Liverpool and Runcorn. Seeing the enthusiasm of young pupils eager to help wildlife in their school grounds motivated me even more. After the project, I was lucky enough to get a job at Cheshire Wildlife Trust, where I get to collaborate with even more community groups who are making a real impact in conservation. 

I firmly believe that collective action can create real societal change. 

If you have an idea for a new community group or project, please reach out—I’ll do everything I can to support you. 

Meet Kellie

I grew up in Cheshire and spent lots of time as a child outside in the countryside. I have the happiest memories of listening for woodpeckers in the woods near my house, going bug hunting and learning the names of all the trees with my dad while collecting fallen leaves.

Like many people, as I grew up, I felt less connected to nature, I paid less attention and I moved away. When I came home several years later, I realised that much of the green space I’d played in as a child had houses on and some of the woodland had gone. It made me think about how many of the things I took for granted as a child, like seeing a hedgehog, are things that some children in Cheshire now have never experienced.

I decided I wanted to ‘do something to help’ and I was lucky enough to get a job with Cheshire Wildlife Trust. I’ve worked here now for almost 5 years and have been part of the wilder Lives team for almost as long. Our team’s main role is to support the Wilder Network by providing resources, training, webinars, events, newsletters and networking opportunities. My background is in Marketing and Communications in the private sector and those skills have been vital since I joined the Trust. My passion has always been working with people and my role in the Wilder Lives team enables me to combine this with my love of nature.

Supporting the growth of the Wild Network is an incredibly rewarding job, taking action for nature and making positive changes in your in your local community can sometimes feel like an uphill battle. You might think,

What difference can one person really make?

but over the last 5 years I’ve heard so many inspiring stories from people, have seen the numbers in Network steadily rise and know that actually there is an army of amazing people out there ‘doing something to help’ and really making a difference. I’m really proud that I get to play a small part in supporting that and the amazing, dedicated people within it. 

Joining the Wild Network is completely free! You'll get monthly newsletters with updates, access to free training workshops, wildlife guides and so much more!

Sign up to the Wild Network!