Penelope Chaney

About me

I am a conservationist, ecologist and a wildlife vet. I have had a really varied career including working for the Wildlife Trust (Bedfordshire/Northamptonshire) doing a range of ecology roles and a local charity (Cambridge Past, Present and Future) working to reconnect communities with the river Cam. As part of this I founded the Rivers of Film Festival and ran the Cambridge Nature Festival as well as being involved in other community projects and the Cambridge Nature Network. As a vet, I have worked with primates in Cameroon and giant tortoises in Galapagos as well as domestic and zoo animals in the UK.

I’m really excited about the opportunity to manage this project looking at landscape scale wetland restoration as this brings together many of the areas I am passionate about – rivers, ecology, community, climate resilience etc. It is almost ecosystem level medicine - looking at the health of the whole river catchment!

I believe that collaborations are hugely important and critical to good conservation work and sit on a number of committees in addition to my role with WWT. Outside work I am a singer, a swimmer and a baker. I love spending time in the mountains, being outside as much as possible and teaching my children to love our world and all the species we share it with as much as I do!

My role / My project

Great Ouse Blue Connections will develop a vision and integrated strategic plan for wetland restoration within two WFD waterbodies that lie in the Great Ouse Lower Operational Catchment. The aim is secure significant benefits for the water environment, including water quality, flood mitigation and biodiversity, both within the project area and downstream.

Working in consultation with landowners and other stakeholders, the partnership will identify opportunities and design schemes for wetland restoration which tackle poor levels of phosphate and dissolved oxygen in these two waterbodies, the most significant reasons for not achieving good ecological status.

This project is a pilot for future work to cover the whole catchment and will involve spatial / opportunity mapping, development of a project pipeline, stakeholder and landowner engagement, citizen science and the production of a vision and strategic plan.

Experience and interests

• Collaborative working / partnership development
• Practical project development
• Catchment scale conservation work