- Location: Fauna & Flora, Cambridge
- Salary: £22,310 per annum
- Contract period: 3 months
- Start date: September 2024
Saiga antelope populations, by the early 2000’s, were decimated with only around 50,000 individuals left in 2007. Due to long term conservation efforts from national and international NGOs working in partnership with governments Saiga numbers now stand at over 2.7 million. This almost unprecedented and remarkable conservation success has led to the downlisting of Saiga from critically endangered to near threatened by the IUCN Red List. With increased population comes new and emerging threats, including increased human and wildlife coexistence issues.
Rangers in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, often from local communities, are charged with protecting biodiversity across vast areas of the Central Asian Steppe often in challenging conditions with limited equipment. Resources, such as water and good pasture land, are adversely affected by the impacts of climate change and competition grows for these limited resources between growing Saiga populations and local communities. In this context, rangers have an added duty to engage and work with local communities and they are often faced with difficult situations where the human rights of both rangers and the local communities are challenged.
It is vital that rangers are aware of the obligations to promote human rights-based conservation and equally important, are aware of their own human rights and minimum standards. Supporting well planned and applied training in human rights can lead to positive knock-on impacts not only for communities and rangers but also for biodiversity.
This internship is a great opportunity to work with Fauna & Flora’s cross cutting teams and national partners in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan to strengthen Saiga conservation within range states by supporting efforts to build capacity amongst rangers and protected area management. You will work closely with the Wildlife Trade Programme Manager, Saiga Conservation Project Manager, project partners the Saiga Conservation Alliance (SCA) and the Association for the Conservation of the Biodiversity of Kazakhstan (ACBK) as well as key staff from across Fauna & Flora to help develop complementary training modules on improving community relations and buy in, safeguarding, and ranger conduct. You will also see how these are adapted to local contexts and manage the translation of materials into local languages (by engaging professional translators).
During this internship, you will have the opportunity to build your understanding of current efforts across the conservation community to support rangers globally, through such initiatives as the Universal Rangers Support Alliance (URSA). You will also develop an understanding of existing approaches to ranger training globally in the field of human rights, codes of conduct and standard operating procedures, and contribute to the development of training resources for Rangers. Through working collaboratively with cross-cutting teams and the Eurasia Central Asia programme, you will build a network of connections in the conservation field while gaining experience on how an international conservation NGO works.
Note that this internship has been designed to create a professional development opportunity for people who are new to the conservation sector. Therefore, applicants should have less than two years’ paid or unpaid experience in the conservation sector (not including academic work).
Please download the job application pack below for further details on how to apply
The closing date for applications is Wednesday, 14 August 2024. Interviews are likely to take place during the week commencing Monday, 26 August 2024.
This role is not eligible for sponsorship for a Skilled Worker Visa.