Wildlife Connect Leader / Coordinator of the Chaco Pantanal Landscape

WWF and the Centre for Large Landscape Conservation are looking to hire a

Wildlife Connect Leader / Coordinator of the Chaco Pantanal Landscape

Wildlife Connect is an exciting new joint initiative of WWF and the Centre for Large Landscape Conservation (CLLC) that aims to create ecologically connected and thus climate-resilient landscapes by stopping habitat fragmentation, ensuring production lands enable wildlife flows, improving land-use planning, creating wildlife corridors, & mitigating barriers to wildlife movements such as infrastructure.

Wildlife Connect has three demonstration landscapes which will be a focus of innovation and learning, one of these is the Chaco Pantanal landscape (PACHA) covering Bolivia, Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay.  This role will lead the Wildlife Connect initiative overall, as well as specifically coordinating the PACHA landscape.

Wildlife Connect Leader, 50%

The Wildlife Connect Leader will work with WWF, CLLC and external partners to advance, manage and facilitate connectivity work globally – within policy fora and the corporate and financial sectors, and across WWF’s field programs. Working at a variety of scales (local, national and international) we are looking for a self-starter with project management experience who is ready to hit the ground running. Qualified candidates will ideally have a background in ecology or natural resource policy/planning and have experience working internationally. This will be a highly dynamic position that will range from strategic design, ideation on best approaches to combat fragmentation and increase ecological connectivity, international connectivity policy, spearheading greater engagement of the corporate and financial sectors on connectivity, building partnerships for successful coalition-building, research and writing.

Experience communicating complex ideas in a way that resonates with a variety of different constituencies is ideal. Travel to regional and national meetings, workshops and conferences will be required, although internally virtual meetings will be utilized whenever possible.

Major Duties & Responsibilities:

• Provide strategic leadership of the Wildlife Connect initiative, ensuring effective delivery of its goals and outcomes.
• Support the technical and scientific development and implementation of Wildlife Connect, working closely with the demonstration landscapes in Africa, Asia and Latin America and relevant external partners
• Lead the ‘global and regional’ strand of Wildlife Connect, which aims to
  • deliver key outcomes in global policy
  • Promote shifts in the policies and engagement strategies of corporates and financial institutions to support connectivity conservation in close collaboration with the Wildlife Practice Policy Lead, Markets and Finance Practices and other relevant stakeholders.
• Provide support to document and synthesize key lessons from the work in each demonstration landscape and share these lessons amongst the broader connectivity community, and enable the scaling of the most promising innovations to additional WWF landscapes
• Actively engage within and work to expand ‘community of practice’ of connectivity specialists (IUCN Connectivity Conservation Specialist Group) to collectively advance this work across the WWF and CLLC networks and beyond, and identify additional partners that can work collectively on landscape connectivity initiatives
• Ensure a continued strong relationship between Wildlife Connect’s partners, WWF and the Center for Large Landscape Conservation, building on the unique strengths of each partner.
• Work with the WWF offices involved in the demonstration landscapes, the proposal development manager and fundraising teams around the network to ensure sufficient funding is secured for the initiative
• Manage the effective operationalisation of the initiative in line with set organisational policies, procedures and delegated authority.
• Represent WWF and CLLC at internal and external events in line with the area of the initiative.

Pantanal Chaco (PACHA) Landscape Coordinator, 50%

Landscape description: The combined Pantanal and Gran Chaco Landscape (PACHA) is roughly 205 million acres. It is one of the most biodiverse grassland, wetland, and dry forest regions on the planet, but with industrial scale soybean and cattle production, the region is experiencing some of the highest rates of fragmentation and land conversion in the world. PACHA contains several critical jaguar conservation units and many of the continent’s critical jaguar corridors, the majority of which are categorized as ‘of concern’.   To survive as a healthy ecosystem, it is critical that this threatened landscape identify key areas of ecological connectivity and implement strategies to maintain corridors and protect the flow of wildlife and processes across the landscape.  The focus of the PACHA landscape is to reduce habitat loss and fragmentation and maintain ecological connectivity.

Major Duties & Responsibilities:

• Provide strategic leadership and support the technical and scientific development and implementation of the PACHA landscape strategy, including strategic approaches to maintaining connectivity, and ensuring effective delivery of its goals and outcomes, working in coordination with each of the country offices - WWF Bolivia, WWF Brazil, WWF Paraguay, Fundación Vida Silvestre Argentina.
• Work with the PACHA country offices to identify, prioritize and support implementation of conservation actions that ensure connectivity is maintained across the landscape. Actions may include, but are not limited to, policy or land use changes, community outreach and coordination, working with protected area managers
• Work with the PACHA country offices, the Wildlife Practice proposal development manager and fundraising teams around the network to ensure sufficient funding is secured for PACHA broadly as well as its ecological connectivity goals
• Manage the effective operationalisation of PACHA in line with set organisational policies, procedures and delegated authority.

• Advanced degree in a field related to conservation, or equivalent professional experience in the general area of wildlife conservation
• At least five-ten years of experience of field based conservation work, ideally involving connectivity, and ideally in one or more of the PACHA countries
• Experience working with community conservation initiatives and an understanding of core principles needed to work with communities
• Excellent written and oral skills in English and Spanish. Other languages such as Portuguese would be an advantage.
• Experience of working in an international environment, particularly in an NGO, and on leading global or regional projects would be an advantage
• Excellent relationship building skills and experience working with diverse partners and interests, including partners that are part of the Wildlife Connect Initiative
• Ability to synthesize complex ideas into easily understandable written pieces
• Ability to present, speak and inspire.
• Demonstrated capacity to think strategically and connect people and projects within and between organisations
• Ability to coordinate/manage processes and projects that require participation and contribution from staff which the post holder has no direct supervisory responsibility.
• Demonstrated project management experience, ability to coordinate projects with many variables, set and meet deadlines and manage a timeline under pressure.
• Ability / willingness to travel internationally.
• Demonstrates behaviours aligned with the culture of WWF; Collaborate Openly, Listen Deeply, Innovate Fearlessly and Strive for Impact.
• Passion for conservation and adheres to WWF’s values, which are knowledgeable, optimistic, determined and engaged.

How to apply

Send your covering letter and CV as one file and in English to convocatorias@wwfbolivia.org with the subject line “Application for Wildlife Connect Leader”. 

Deadline March 4th.

Work permit restrictions may apply.

Only short-listed candidates will be contacted.

Early application is encouraged as we will review applications throughout the advertising period and reserve the right to close the advert early.

Reports to: WWF Bolivia Conservation Director, dotted coordination line to Wildlife Practice Leader and President of the Centre for Large Landscape Conservation

Location: Santa Cruz, Bolivia

wwf.panda.org

https://largelandscapes.org