What do our Graduates do?

In a competitive sector, a question commonly posed to us is where do our students end up? Thankfully employment rates are very favourable, and recent Moulton graduates have ended up working in rewarding roles with the Environment Agency, Natural England, English Heritage, Belchim Crop Protection, Indigro, Agrovista, Lockhart Garrett, Aspect Ecology, NFU Mutual and many more.

To learn more, click on the student biographies below!

Collaboration is the Way Forward for Student Success!

With long established partnerships with organisations such as the Forestry Commission, The Environment Agency, Lamport Hall and Kelmarsh Hall - working through partnerships is evidently a great way for students to learn about the industry.

With a more recent arrangement with the Ginpat Charitable Trust and Natural England giving students access to a precious parcel of ancient woodland in the Northamptonshire countryside, staff are now working hard to create new opportunities for students to work with other organisations in the region. For example, a recent working agreement has been approved with the countryside services team of Northamptonshire County Council to give students who have an interest in becoming country park rangers opportunities for work experience and project work. Further discussions are also taking place with Wickstead Park in Kettering, who have recently secured Heritage Lottery Funding to enable them to develop a more ecological focus for the site.

There has never been a better time to study countryside management to take advantage of these links - so whats stopping you? Get in touch now!

To learn more about the Country Parks of Northamptonshire, view:

Get active - get healthy - get outdoors - visit  : www.northamptonshire.gov.uk/parks

Want a Job in Countryside Management, Ecology or Wildlife Conservation?

Presenting at the Mammal Society Student Conference

PhD student Emily Howard-Williams and Dr David Wallis (pictured below) attended the recent student conference of the Mammal Society at the Centre for Science of the University of Staffordshire.

They were able to present their initial findings on the development of RFID technology in tracking the disperal of native small mammals to the audience consisting of academics and researchers from Universities all over the UK. This technique provides a much more cost effective and longer lasting alternative to radio tracking, and will enable them alongside Dr James Littlemore to model what happens when a mammal is reintroduced into habitat.

Very soon Emily will be preparing for a large scale release of tagged harvest mice to supplement wild populations - check back to the blog to see what happens next!

Find a link to the conference here: http://www.mammal.org.uk/student_conference.

Ottercam Reveals All!

A month has passed since the camera trap was installed at the otter holt created by students along the River Welland, and the footage was recently scrutinised to see if any otters had set up home.

For the month of May, the holt was popular with pheasants, rabbits, blackbirds and carrion crows but alas no otters so far! The camera has been set up to record visitors during June so check back to the blog to see if our designer residence has any new tenants! By the way, two otters were spotted moving through the section of river in the middle of nearby Market Harborough, so evidently they are not shy individuals on this stretch of river.

Academic Research Poster Success!

For many years now, Moulton College has run a competition that seeks to find the best academic research poster amongst all current second and third year Degree students. This mimics what happens at scientific conferences, where scientists can present research findings in the form of an informative poster to a wider audience.

This years competition was judged by the University of Warwick's Dr Sebastiano Giudice, who commented very positively on the quality of the student work and indicated that they compared favourably with the standards at his University. So who won?

Well of the three available categories, higher education students studying countryside management won two - a remarkable achievement considering there were hundreds of available entries. Lewis York won the research category for his poster which was entitled 'Habitat Preferences of Marsh Tits (Poecile palustris) and Blue Tits (Cyanistes caeruleus) at Monks Wood National Nature Reserve NNR'. Alex Laws won the case-study category for his poster describing a project with Natural England that was catchily entitled 'Re-creating Jurassic Park'!

Images of the winning posters are given above.