Conservation Careers: Making Waves in Wales

This month, our conservation careers blog series travels to Wales to meet Shea Buckland-Jones at WWF Cymru. 

As a panda of 5 years, Shea has shared the journey to his role as Head of Policy and Advocacy. While his career nearly took a twist from the environmental sector in 2011 to further a potential rock band career after a No1 hit in Qatar (yes, it's true! Check out the details here), his career has taken off since working with various organisations in the Welsh environmental sector! 

What does a typical day doing your job look like?   

My role mostly involves working with the brilliant WWF Cymru team in Cardiff. I oversee of all our policy and advocacy work programmes in Wales, which span across the food system, land use, freshwater and marine landscapes. One of the core purposes of my role is to influence senior decision makers, particularly in Welsh Government/Senedd - to hold them to account on promises they’ve made to the environment and ultimately support WWF’s vision to halt nature loss and ensure nature is recovering. 

On a day-to-day basis that will mean, for example, leading and supporting colleagues on the development and delivery of policy and advocacy strategies. I also work with communications colleagues on the development of public campaigns, this often includes holding events to raise awareness of our policy asks in the Senedd, undertaking media interviews to engage the public on our work and more. And not to forget supporting the team's wellbeing and ensuring that I get my daily dose of nature (which is usually a 1-hour lunchtime walk of Wales’ beautiful coastline when working at home!). 

Tell us about something you're currently working on.  

I’m currently working on the design of a new WWF Cymru campaign on freshwater habitats.  Our Living Planet Report 2024 shows that freshwater species populations have declined by 85% globally since 1970 and here in Wales we’re seeing salmon and sea trout declines of roughly 70% over the past ten years alone. River pollution is an issue that is a huge concern for the public, and one which connects WWF Cymru’s areas of work, from the food system to marine habitats. 

Reversing freshwater species declines is a daunting challenge. But at the same, campaign planning can be an energising and rewarding exercise. I’m currently working closely with both policy and comms teams to provide creative spaces for colleagues to come up with campaign ideas. My role is coordinating policy and advocacy input into the campaign and work closely with the wider Cymru team and our freshwater specialist to produce a campaign plan, define the problem and identify key outcomes we want to achieve. Crucially, part of my role is also to ensure we have the resource (financial and person power) to drive an effective campaign.  

How did you get into advocacy, within the environmental sector? 

I grew up in a small Welsh village called Cwmaman (a village made famous by the Stereophonics for those who know the band). What many people wouldn’t realise is how beautiful the landscape is, it’s a former coal mining village which lies in the valley of several mountains. My grandad was a farmer in Cwmaman for decades, and throughout my youth I spent most of my days in nature.  

Years later, I chose to study law and politics in Cardiff University. I’ll be honest in saying that it felt like a safe study option at the time, with the potential for different career paths. And I knew that having a better understanding of politics that I may, someday, have an influence in shaping decisions - particularly on sustainability, in my local community and elsewhere. To ensure former mining villages like Cwmaman weren’t left behind.  

Post University I hoped to get straight into working for an environmental organisation. But options were limited in Wales. After volunteering for Friends of the Earth Cymru, in between random temp jobs, an opportunity came up for my first policy job at Community Housing Cymru. I eventually lead the housing sector's sustainability work programme – where I worked tirelessly to get housing bodies to take up incentives for renewable energy generation.  

That eventually led to a job at the Institute of Welsh Affairs, where things really took off for me. I led a 3-year project, bringing together the avengers of Wales’ energy sector, implementing a project to put Wales on a path to meeting most of its energy needs through renewables. As that project came to an end, the WWF Cymru opportunity came up to drive a work programme on food systems and land use. It was the perfect opportunity for me – a chance to work for a major ENGO, and a huge chance to connect with my roots in nature and farming. 3 years later I was to land the Head of Policy and Advocacy role in WWF Cymru. 

If you could give one piece of advice to someone looking to apply for a similar role, what would you say?  

Keep persevering! It took me much longer than I had planned to get to where I wanted to be. What I didn’t realise along the journey was the transferable skills I was picking up in those ‘random temp’ jobs. Although I wasn’t working in the environment sector for a while post university, I was gaining valuable experience across the public and private sectors and building my skills in project management, research, interpersonal communication and teamwork. I’d never worked in an office until after university, and even that took some getting used too. In my experience, it was definitely a marathon (I’m still running it by the way) and not a sprint. Trust your instincts, be patient and persistent when needs be. 

Finally, what gives you hope in our mission to bring our world back to life?  

Reading this question, the first thing that came to mind was that classic Jurassic Park quote ‘nature always finds a way’. I think that quote can be read to have different meanings. For me it conveys the power of nature to fight back. Nature’s resilience to bounce back from different stresses. Alongside this, my biggest comfort blanket is that we know the solutions. Combine that with the growth in youth movements who are fighting for our planet, and projects worldwide that show it can be done, that all starts to add up to a powerful recipe to ensure the battle can be won.