![]() ![]() “I’ve always had the mindset of trying to hustle and get as much money as possible to do the cool things in the field that I want to do,” she says. She juggled classes while working 20 hours per week to pay tuition, room, and board, and allow her to take unpaid positions. Some hands-on training opportunities in classes like botany also disappeared when the pandemic forced learning online.Īs an undergraduate biology major, Nicole Lussier had a similar experience. “I just never had the ability to accept unpaid positions because I needed to spend my time doing paid work to make money to pay my necessary bills,” says Veronica ( Audubon is omitting her last name to prevent retaliation from current or prospective employers). Veronica, who majored in ecology at the City University of New York, couldn’t consider a below-minimum-wage field job during college. ![]() Free or subsidized housing doesn’t help someone who can’t, for example, crash with parents or friends between jobs. And yet, says Bailey, that abundance may obscure those who are often missing from the pool: biologists who lack savings and safety nets. More than 100 people applied for the Galápagos Islands job I accepted, a profusion of applicants not uncommon for coveted jobs-paid or unpaid-that involve working with charismatic animals such as birds. That luxury, Bailey believes, has profound effects on who ends up in a career in conservation and how we solve today’s environmental challenges. “It is a luxury to take an unpaid position and still support yourself,” says University of Colorado Boulder environmental social scientist Karen Bailey. position in that same lab group.Īll of this, say experts, is exactly the problem. Three years later, that stint led to a Ph.D. I was also aware then-and even more so now-that I had a safety net not everyone has: If plans went awry, I could borrow money from my parents. I knew I could forgo income for a few extra months if necessary, and I had enough savings to cover my monthly student loan payments at my mother’s insistence, I purchased catastrophic health insurance. I saw the opportunity as my best shot at entering the bird world. So when I received the job offer in the Galápagos, I eagerly accepted. I often saw it as I applied for roughly 185 field jobs and internships during my five years as a seasonal field biologist after college. “Unpaid-compensation is the field experience and networking” In January 2022, I perused one of the same job boards in Fournier’s study and came across postings like this: In recent years, momentum has grown to improve upon this status quo, both Fournier and McOmber say. Moving up the ranks often requires a succession of volunteer gigs, low-paid positions, and temporary roles with no career security for years. What’s more, these patterns also continue well past an early training period, says biologist Kristina McOmber, who spent 11 years striving to make ends meet while doing seasonal fieldwork. In 2015, Auriel Fournier, now director of the Forbes Biological Station, led a study that found about a third of positions posted on two popular job boards were either unpaid entirely or offered stipends of less than $300 a month. Often highly competitive, these openings promise training in techniques, such as banding songbirds, identifying plants, or surveying marine mammals, that are critical for jump-starting careers.īut many seasonal and intern positions have long offered little to no pay. Descriptions of stunning locations (Live in Hawai’i!) or charismatic megafauna (Survey sea turtles!) attract the eyes of hopeful applicants. Ecology, conservation, and wildlife job boards burst each year with listings seeking seasonal researchers to measure trees, track bears, band birds, and perform a range of tasks that involve collecting scientific data. My experience was common, and it points to a serious problem with the traditional career path for field scientists. I couldn’t apply for the next field job until I left the island. ![]() The remote location also meant no internet access. While my flight, food, sturdy boots, and housing (a tent) would be covered, I wouldn’t earn a penny for three months. I was thrilled, except there was one catch. After a summer spent working with Atlantic Puffins, I landed a dream job: a three-month gig in the Galápagos Islands studying another seabird, the Nazca Booby. In 2011, two years after graduating college as a biology major, I switched my focus from plants to birds. ![]()
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