I was born in Poole and have lived in Dorset all of my life (so far) except for three years when I was at Southampton University studying Life Sciences and Ecology. I graduated from there with upper second class honours in 1998 but didn't really know what I wanted to do. It wasn't until I saw a careers advisor at Bournemouth University in July 2000 that I had any real idea what I was going to do. It came down to nature conservation or computers.

Now I didn't really fancy being inside all the time and it seemed a shame, if not complete madness, to have a degree in Ecology and do nothing at all related to that. So I started looking around on the internet and quickly decided I would volunteer for Dorset Wildlife Trust. Volunteering was the 'accepted' way of getting into conservation so that's what I would do too.

After volunteering with DWT at Brooklands Farm for 5 months or so I then volunteered with Andy Fale, the DWT warden on Upton Heath. I went out a couple of times a week and discovered I really like being outside, even in the rain.

A voluntary opportunity then came up with BTCV so I volunteered as a Volunteer Officer for about six months. I was volunteering with them 5 days a week and working in the evenings in a late night convenience store to bring the pennies in. This was great and I was getting to do a whole range of stuff - initial site visits, risk assessments, tool selection and loading, driving the minibus and leading the tasks. This is another one of those 'accepted' ways into a paid conservation job.

The Urban Heaths LIFE project then came along and I have been employed by them almost every year since 2001 on a casual or seasonal basis. This was great - my first paid conservation job. Although the first year was just a 3 month contract, it was great and I got to meet lots of people.

Seasonal and short-term contracts are great but what you really want is a full-time permanent job. I was doing everything right as far as I could tell, but still I hadn't managed to get a full-time paid job in nature conservation. Almost in despair I went into IT. I went to college, got my A+ qualification and quickly got a job working in the IT department of a large local hospital.

While I was working at the hospital I still went out volunteering with wardens Andy Fale and Nigel Brooks on Upton Heath. I'd use my holiday and flexitime to have every Thursday with them which would help to keep me sane (-ish). It was while volunteering with them that I got a big break. I was in the right place at the right time and landed a job as an assistant ecologist with a small ecological consultancy. I'm still there now and looking forward to my first spring of newt surveying (which I'm lead to believe is an absolutely manic time of year characterised by getting up very early in the morning and going to bed very late at night. I'm also training to be a registered bat warden which is really cool. The rabies vaccination that you have to have is a bit concerning though.

Anyway, over the almost 7 years I've been volunteering I've become frustrated at having to look at numerous web sites, e-mail people and phone others just to get the volunteer task programmes from the main task organisers in the county. This just so I could get a good idea of what was happening on any particular day and decide what task I wanted to go on. I thought there had to be a better way. I thought that somebody should publish a booklet or set up a web site to bring all of this information together in one convenient place.

Last year, with some prodding from Andy Fale, I eventually decided to do something about it. Although I'd worked in IT for 3 years and have been interested in computers since I was 13, I had absolutely no idea how to go about this feat. I quickly gave up with the design-a-website-from-a-template approach that my internet service provider provided and got myself some web design software. With a lot of perseverance, a couple of Dummies books and a few helpful pointers from colleagues at the hospital, I managed to cobble together the very first version of the web site.

Since then it's been through numerous versions, steadily getting better (I hope) as my knowledge of web design has improved. I'm currently studying web design at Kingston Maurward College one evening a week - which is brilliant. Having somebody to ask and talk to is far superior to any number of books, and I would like to thank Tom Lawton for teaching this brilliant course. Of course now I've thanked one person I have to thanks loads of people so I'd like to thank everybody who's helped me over the years.

Mark Singleton, March 2007

Help!!!

Unfortunately I have just been made redundant from my job as Assistant Ecologist with a small local ecological consultancy. In the short term this may well be good news for visitors to this site as I will now have more time to spend on updating this site.

On the down side I'm out of work. So If anybody is looking for an out of work assistant ecologist with skills in the following areas who can start almost immediately then please contact me.

• Experience of Newt Survey (including bottle trapping)
• Experience of Reptile Survey and Reptile Translocation
• Sand Lizard and Smooth Snake Licence from Natural England
• Training for Bat Roost Visitors licence
• NPTC Chainsaw certificate
• NPTC Pesticides certificate
• Up to date First Aid at Work certificate
• Solid and ever increasing skills and experience in web design, brochure design, Adobe Photoshop CS3, Adobe Dreamweaver CS3, Adobe Illustrator CS3, Adobe Flash CS3
• Three years experience in Front Line IT Support for Poole Hospital NHS Trust
• Good knowledge of conservation volunteering in Dorset
  

Mark Singleton, January 2008

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