2nd years have you considered a sandwich year?
The Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust are currently advertising 7 placements:
Geographical Information Science (GIS) and Grey Partridge Research (2 placements)
Farmland Ecology Unit (FEU)
Lowland Game & Wildlife Research (LGR)
Upland Research Unit, Drumochter, Inverness-shire
Upland Research Unit, North Pennines
Wetland Research
Michael Hockey applied last year and was successful, so give it a go! There is more information on their websitehttp://www.gwct.org.uk/about_us/job_vacancies/default.asp
There are no closing dates but Julie Ewald from GWCT says “– I would strongly suggest that interested students,who know they want to work with us, get a CV, covering letter (describe what they want out of the placement and what skills they bring to it – this needs to give us some idea of why they should stand out from the crowd – we really use this to select interviewees) and any references that their lecturers can give them – to us by the first week in January. I would strongly advice also that the students to have their tutors send us these references directly. These also are very useful for selecting interviewees.”
N.B. In the case of the Lowland Game & Wildlife Research (LGR) placement they would prefer that applications are sent beginning the first of January 2013.
Michael thought you might be interested to read more about a current joint project between GWCT and RSPBhttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-19978941