Principal Conservation Scientist - West Africa

This post provides an exciting opportunity for a scientist with experience of tropical forest conservation science, ecosystem service valuation and spatially explicit scenario modelling use their scientific expertise to inform the delivery of sustainable livelihoods and tropical forest conservation in a global biodiversity hotspot under high threat.

Joining the International Conservation Science team, you will work closely with International Operations and social science colleagues in RSPB and BirdLife partners and stakeholders in country. You will make a full contribution to the work of the International Conservation Science team, the wider Conservation Science department, and RSPB’s international programmes and work with country partners and through BirdLife.

The successful candidate will:

• work initially with SCNL (BirdLife Liberia) on an EU-funded project to assess land management scenarios in the community lands of the Greater Gola Landscape, identifying which most effectively deliver sustainable livelihoods, biodiversity and ecosystem services in the same landscape.
• produce spatially explicit scenario models for economic benefits and costs of land use and trade-offs and synergies with biodiversity. These will conserve biodiversity and empower communities to make informed decisions about participation in policy initiatives like REDD+.
• provide the evidence needed for sustainable financing of forest conservation in the Greater Gola Landscape in Liberia and measurement of the impact of these schemes.
• identify important knowledge gaps on forest and land use research for Liberia and design research to answer these gaps to ensure RSPB actions and projects are evidence-based.

Essential:

• PhD in relevant subject, or equivalent experience.
• Can provide strategic leadership on tropical forest conservation, including ecosystem service evaluation for the organisation.
• Demonstrable experience of raising external funding for science projects, particularly in applied conservation streams and working with multiple partners
• Broad and deep knowledge of West African/tropical forest species ecology and of ecosystem service valuation to answer novel questions at both practical and analytical levels.
• Project design to a robust scientific standard - forecasting the necessary time scales
• Can communicate complex scientific principles and outcomes clearly to a range of non-scientist stakeholders through writing and advocacy to a wide range of audiences.
• Skilled use of packages for statistical and spatial data analyses, such as a high level of coding expertise in spatial packages in R or Python.
• Proven extensive experience working as a scientist internationally, leading multiple scientific research projects and managing budgets, staff, volunteers and students, and publishing peer-reviewed papers.
• Culturally sensitive and able to communicate and work effectively with a wide range of highly diverse stakeholders and colleagues.
• Experience of working in conservation or science in one or more low income countries.

Additional Information:

This post has a strong possibility to be extended if successful in securing external funding for west African forest conservation research. If extended, you will support RSPB’s wider tropical forest and woodland conservation work in west Africa, with a focus on Guinean forests, working at the nexus between biodiversity conservation and ecosystem services to underpin evidence-based forest conservation.

Closing: Monday 20th October
Interviews for this position will be from 3rd November.

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