The Harrow Nature Conservation Forum is seeking an assistant warden for Stanmore Common. The position would be initially for four months, at the end of which both parties would decide whether to continue.

Stanmore Common is the northernmost of Harrow’s open spaces. It comprises areas of woodland interspersed with open acid heathland characterized by acid-loving plants such as heather, heath bedstraw and common tormentil. These remnants of open acid heathland are of particular ecological interest, and work funded by the London Heathland Heritage Project is ongoing to return some of the secondary woodland to heath. Birds known to breed at Stanmore Common include all three woodpeckers, tawny owl, tree creeper, whitethroat, nuthatch and cuckoo.

Members of the warden team take time getting to know the site and then take responsibility for its management and for interaction with the public. Collectively the warden team, together with the Biodiversity Officer and the Public Realm manager from Harrow Council and Natural England and other external bodies, create the strategy for managing the Common. Management has two strands, maintenance of the present ecological structure (for example, by mowing the heathland areas to prevent succession to scrub) and carefully planned improvements (for example, the clearing of recent secondary woodland to reinstate open rides connecting the currently isolated areas of open heathland).

Specific roles and responsibilities include:

• Spending time on the site, getting to know the paths, plants and animals.
• Low scale maintenance of the site such as picking up litter and cutting back branches that are impeding paths.
• Participation in the creation of management plans.
• Supervision of volunteer working parties who perform jobs such as scrub clearance and building boardwalk bridges. Working parties are of two types:
• Volunteers from the British Trust for Conservation Volunteers (BTCV) are accompanied by a supervisor who is responsible for safety, transport and refreshments, so the warden’s role is specifically to supervise the work done.
• Local volunteers recruited through the Harrow Nature Conservation website and other media. The existing wardens, David Bailey and Simon Braidman, usually supervise but in time the new volunteer would be expected to supervise occasionally. In this case the warden is responsible for all aspects of the event including safety. The Forum has generated generic risk assessments that can be adapted for specific working party tasks.
• Contact with the public. Wardens should talk to members of the public about the site and distribute leaflets. They should encourage good behaviour and, where possible and safe, discourage bad behaviour such as lighting fires. Where direct intervention would be unsafe, wardens should call from help from the Cannons Safer Neighbourhoods Police Team or, for immediate help, call 999.
• Attendance at Harrow Nature Conservation Forum meetings, which are held three times a year, usually on Tuesday evenings at the Civic Centre, Station Road.
• Assistance with stalls at public shows and other profile raising events.

Opportunities will be provided for wardens to be trained in identification of specific plant or animal groups and in the use of horticultural equipment such as brush cutters and chain saws, leading to vocational qualifications including LANTRA and NPTC.

For more information, contact Simon Braidman on 020 8386 2502, David Bailey on 074 2862 3774 or Stephen Bolsover on admin@harrowncf.org.