Permanent, Full Time (35 hours per week)

This role is predominantly home-based with regular travel to London, locations across the UK and our Office facilities at The Kiln, Waterside, Mather Road, Newark, NG24 1WT for those within easy travelling distance. There may be an opportunity to on occasion work from the offices at a local Wildlife Trust.

Closing date for applications: 22 November 2026

First interview: 08 & 09 December 2026 (Online)

Second interview: 16 December 2026 (In person at our Newark office)

About Us

The Wildlife Trusts are a grassroots movement of people from a wide range of backgrounds and all walks of life who believe that we need nature and nature needs us. We have more than 945,000 members, over 33,000 volunteers, 4,100 staff and 600 trustees. There are 46 individual Wildlife Trusts, each of which is a place-based independent charity with its own legal identity, formed by groups of people coming together to make a positive difference for wildlife and future generations where they live and work.

Every Wildlife Trust is part of The Wildlife Trusts federation and a corporate member of the Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts, founded in 1912 and one of the founding members of IUCN. Together this federation of 47 charities is known as The Wildlife Trusts.

The next few years will be critical in determining what kind of world we all live in. Nature is declining at an alarming rate and the climate crisis continues to accelerate. Through our collective Strategy 2030, Bringing Nature Back, we are committed to putting nature into recovery, creating resilient ecosystems, recovering species, restoring natural processes and enabling more people to take action for nature.

Achieving this ambition will require bold leadership, strong partnerships and large-scale collaboration across communities, government, land managers, business and civil society. It will require us to think and act at landscape scale while remaining rooted in place and connected to local communities.

About You

Are you passionate about restoring nature at scale and helping create a future where people and wildlife thrive together?

Do you have the vision, ambition and strategic leadership experience to bring together partners, communities, Wildlife Trusts and funders behind a shared ambition to recover nature across land, freshwater, coastal & rural landscapes?

The Wildlife Trusts are looking for an inspiring, collaborative and values-driven leader with expertise in landscape-scale nature recovery, ecological restoration, strategic partnerships and innovation to lead one of the most exciting areas of our work.

This is a unique opportunity to help shape how nature recovers across the UK. You will be a visible advocate for nature recovery and a trusted ambassador for The Wildlife Trusts, the wider federation and the conservation sector. Comfortable operating at senior levels, you will represent the movement externally with credibility and authority, building influential relationships and communicating a compelling vision for nature’s recovery across media, policy, partnership and public platform.

As Director of Nature and Species Recovery, you will provide strategic leadership for The Wildlife Trusts’ ambitions to restore nature at scale through landscape recovery, species recovery, nature recovery networks, ecological restoration, rural landscapes and rewilding. Working across our federation of 46 independent Wildlife Trusts, you will help create the conditions for ambitious, collaborative action that delivers lasting impact for wildlife, climate and people.

Whether through helping Wildlife Trusts develop landscape-scale recovery projects, fostering collaboration across regions and habitats, building partnerships capable of delivering transformative change, or influencing national conversations about the future of nature recovery, you will play a pivotal role in helping deliver our vision for a wilder future.

You will lead work that brings together local action and national ambition, helping individual Wildlife Trusts maximise their contribution to our shared goal of putting nature into recovery. You will champion innovation, evidence-led practice and learning across the federation, ensuring local success contributes to collective impact.

In addition, you will provide strategic oversight of The Wildlife Trusts’ engagement with International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) programmes, partnerships and standards, ensuring best practice and learning to strengthen our work and influence.

As a member of our Senior Leadership Team, you will help shape organisational strategy, contribute to our culture and values, and strengthen the impact of one of the UK’s largest and most influential nature movements. At a time when nature and climate face unprecedented challenges, this role offers an exceptional opportunity to help create nature-rich landscapes where wildlife and people can flourish for generations to come.

You will combine excellent ecological understanding with exceptional relationship-building skills, enabling you to bring together diverse stakeholders around a shared vision for nature recovery. Comfortable operating within complex environments, you will excel at building partnerships, developing ambitious programmes and navigating competing priorities with confidence, empathy and sound judgement.

You will bring a deep understanding of nature recovery, species conservation, ecological restoration and the conditions required for nature to recover at scale, including rewilding, regenerative land management and habitat restoration. You will be able to identify opportunities that accelerate progress, strengthen collaboration and maximise impact across the federation, helping to connect local action with national ambition.