Staff

Carys joined the Trust in August 2024 as Senior Bat Conservation Officer. Prior to this, she spent nearly a decade at Bristol Zoological Society in various roles, most recently as UK Conservation Officer. Carys brings broad practical experience in ecology, data analysis and project management skills, as well as experience in teaching Higher Education students and working with volunteers. She holds an MSc in Wildlife and Conservation Management and has a particular interest in applied conservation action for bats. Her current research focuses on improving survey methodologies for tree-roosting species. Carys also provides bat care and rehabilitation in her spare time. Office: Ledbury

Jenny joined VWT in January 2025 as Bat Conservation Officer. Pursuing a career change to follow her passion for wildlife, she completed her BSc (Hons) in Ecology at Cardiff University in 2010. Jenny has volunteered with several local conservation organisations and worked as a freelance ecologist before moving to full-time ecological consultancy in 2021. This role allowed her to gain extensive experience in protected species surveys, mitigation, and project management. In her free time, Jenny provides bat care and rehabilitation, which also gives her opportunities to engage with the public and share her enthusiasm for bats. Office: Ledbury

Following her role as Project Manager during the successful development phase of VWT's Martens on the Move project, Stephanie joined VWT in January 2024 as Project Manager for the four year delivery phase of the project, enabled by a further grant award from The National Lottery Heritage Fund. She has a background in conservation biology and endangered species management and over twenty years’ experience of working with landowners and volunteers to achieve landscape-scale conservation outcomes. Stephanie is from Australia where she undertook her undergraduate degree and PhD at the Australian School of Environmental Studies, Griffith University. Her PhD on the spotted-tailed quoll, a marsupial carnivore, was based in the Gondwana Rainforest World Heritage and the Darling Downs areas of the east coast and involved collaborations with Queensland and New South Wales Parks Services. Stephanie moved to Scotland from Australia in 2007 and has spent five years working as an ecological consultant and eleven years working on red squirrel conservation, most recently with the Scottish Wildlife Trust on their Saving Scotland’s Red Squirrels project. Stephanie is Chair of the Dumfries and Galloway Pine Marten Group and is interested in all things carnivore and landscape-scale species recovery. Office: Dalbeattie, Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland.

Lucy joined VWT in spring 2024 as a Project Officer with Martens on the Move, focusing on the Pine Marten Monitoring Hubs and Haven in Wales and bordering English counties. They have spent the last two years working on the Bannau Brycheiniog Pine Marten Project, setting up camera traps and den boxes in the National Park to monitor pine martens dispersing from the reintroduction sites in mid-Wales and the Forest of Dean. Lucy had a previous life as a commercial solicitor. Wanting to follow their passion for wildlife, they switched into working in conservation in 2020 following a placement monitoring kiwis and their mammal predators in a New Zealand forest sanctuary. They went on to gain experience in mammal conservation at Sea Watch Foundation on their cetacean monitoring programme, but pine martens have enduringly stolen their heart. They wrote their BSc dissertation on the use of scat analysis to study pine marten diet so they have already developed a reputation for collecting poo. Office: Bristol

Victoria joined VWT in March 2024 as Project Officer with Martens on the Move. She will be working in the south of Scotland and north of England setting up a network of volunteers and training them in monitoring and surveying pine martens in the Strategic Recovery Area. Victoria comes to VWT from Saving Scotland’s Red Squirrels, where she was Project Officer first in southwest Scotland and then the southeast. Supporting eighteen volunteer groups carrying out grey squirrel control to protect red squirrel populations, she trained them in monitoring and surveying using camera traps and feeder boxes, as well as identifying hair samples using a microscope. Before that Victoria honed her surveying skills as a freelance ecologist doing mainly bat and plant surveys across south Scotland. Victoria is Secretary of the Dumfries and Galloway Pine Marten Group where she can indulge in her passion for monitoring wildlife and getting out into the woods with like-minded people. She is studying a Masters in Wildlife and Conservation Management and her dissertation involves a comparative assessment of non-invasive monitoring techniques that allow for the identification of individual martens. Office: Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland