Wildlife Heritage Foundation

Volunteering

At WHF we are dependent on the hard work and support of many volunteers. They undertake all manner of tasks, from assisting with the cleaning to feeding of the cats; showing our guests around to helping with grass cutting; and many other tasks around the site.

Marley Farm is a site rich in bird, small mammal and reptile species. Our volunteers play a major part in assisting WHF to manage the bio-diversity on site to protect the wildlife already here, and we hope into the future encourage new species to move on to the site.

Volunteers need not have any particular knowledge when they start as we will train you to undertake the tasks you are given. You will however need to have good customer care skills as we believe in providing excellent service to our members and guests. You will also need to have a willingness to turn your hand to any task within your ability. We are a very small organisation, so the flexibility of all our team and ability for everyone to get on is paramount to our success.

Some of the work undertaken by volunteers is hard manual labour in difficult weather conditions. At other times you might be showing a member around the site on a beautiful summer´s day.

Almost all our voluntary tasks involve working outdoors, and not always close to the cats. One of the hardest parts of our job is to ensure that the cats have some time each day to themselves. The team respect that and accept that running a centre like ours is not all about close contact with cats for all of the time.

Apply as a Volunteer

Work Placement

WHF provides a limited number of work placement opportunities each year. These are normally to students working in our partner collages of Sparsholt College Hampshire and Hadlow College Kent.

However subject to your tutors approval we do occasionally offer places to students on appropriate animal and / or conservation science courses at other colleges.

We welcome students that need to undertake a block placement or those requiring a fixed day per week.

The work is interesting and varied but be warned you are as likely to be washing up cups for our guests as you are working directly with our cats – we are a very small team and everyone has to muck in with the priority task of the moment!!

We recommend early application to enquiries@whf.org.uk as demand for places far exceeds availability.

Apply for Work Placement

Academic Research

WHF is pleased to offer facilities to students wishing to undertake non-invasive research or behavioural studies of captive cats.

Before approval the planned research will need to be presented in a form that enables us to complete our ethical review procedures. There has to be an intended benefit that furthers human knowledge of the species or WHF understanding of our individual animals needs.

Apply for Academic Research