This week’s blog is a guest post written by Kala, a 2008 Bucktails alum. Kala is a Project Manager with Environmental Solutions & Innovations (ESI), where she works as a Protected Species Regulatory Manager. Her career has taken her all across North America working with many different species – both terrestrial and aquatic.
As I go into my 12th year in the environmental workforce, I decided to reflect on the things that caught me off guard as I advanced through my career. Working for multiple consulting firms, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada, and a mitigation banking company has given me a slightly unique perspective of what many young graduates go through in their job searches. I found three things that stood out in my experiences the most.
1: How Niche Environmental Work Is The environmental workforce is a very small subsect of the overall job opportunities with an overwhelmingly high job demand. Each year, it grows more prominent due to changes in regulations, innovative technologies, and a general acknowledgment of need and appreciation that hasn’t always been the standard opinion. While there is job security and a future of growth, it can be a formidable workforce to break into.
Historically, once you got an environmental job with a company or government agency, you stayed with them throughout your career; you see that with the older generations who have held their positions for 20-30+ years. Many government positions allow you to build a career (and pension) with just one agency to this day. Consulting work is much faster paced and less likely to develop your career with one company because there is almost too much work to go around.
However, there is a high bar of entry for those positions. Long Field hours with minimal pay, unpaid internships without housing for research opportunities, traveling far and wide for weeks at a time, living out of horror story motels, and not knowing the right person to talk to or when can delay your advancement in the environmental industry. Everyone in the game knows someone else, and networking is critical in this field of work because the market is saturated with new graduates seeking the same jobs as you.
Unfortunately, a passion for the environment and good grades normally aren’t enough to get you a job outside of college or high school; that’s your foundation. You need a strong foundation, an understanding of science and a love or curiosity for it. Still, it would be best if you also did outreach to build the framework of your career. The framework is where things can get complicated because these are your internships, clubs, community events, WLA outreach, and mentorships that help you build that network of people you need to know to find jobs. You will always stand out more with a handshake at a youth fishing mentorship event than on a sheet of paper on their desk.
2: Fieldwork Maybe it was my naivete, but there were some aspects of fieldwork I didn’t anticipate, but they ended up being my favorite reasons for fieldwork. First and foremost, unless you have done some backcountry camping/backpacking/hiking, most people have not experienced true wilderness or had to depend on themselves for survival. You must be prepared for anything, whether you are minutes from home or hundreds of miles away when conducting fieldwork. Not only do you need to pack in the gear you need to perform your work, but you also need everything you need to survive the day. That can lead to a heavy pack. I’ve worked with unfortunate souls who thought a Snickers bar and bottle of Mt. Dew was enough to keep them going for a job that was two miles of bushwhacking before we even got to the survey site in the middle of summer. By lunch, I was sharing my water with them, creating a dangerous situation for us due to the heat. I’ve fallen off cliffs while walking a survey line, tore my MLC, and was ‘stuck’ in a valley bottom. My choice was to attempt to crawl a mile uphill to the parked truck or walk three miles out of the stream bed to the nearest road intersection; luckily, my co-workers helped by going and getting the truck and driving around the mountain to where the stream met the road. I was able to limp my way out. But if I didn’t have the spare bandanas with me, I wouldn’t have been able to splint my leg to stabilize it.
Access isn’t always an option for fieldwork; dirt roads don’t reach that far into the woods, and in many cases, the old roads are impassable. Your work vehicle often becomes your lifeline, holding spare equipment, a storm shelter, and your favorite nap spot. Usually, your vehicle is far away, and it quickly becomes your favorite thing to see after a long day of work (that sweet, sweet AC).
End of the road, but miles to go to reach the lake we were conducting salmon telemetry work on. Approximately 120km from the closest town.
Site access can also impact your job times. Say you are conducting migratory bird surveys for clients who need to know where they can and can’t work due to the nesting birds. Bird surveys start thirty minutes after sunrise (to make it easy, we will say 5:30am). Your motel is an hour away from your access to the site, but you need to check a portion of the project that takes you forty minutes to hike into from your vehicle; that’s not accounting for breakfast or other morning rituals, so that means your workday starts at the very latest 3:30am. Your entire workday could be done by noon!
A counter to this point is mist netting for bats; those surveys start at sundown and can go until 3-4am, depending on the effort needed. What if you are working for a company that does both types of surveys, and one week you are assigned bat work, and the next you are on birds?
Evening bat (Nycticeius humeralis) taking a breather on my shoulder after being processed.
Those are long, exhausting hours many people struggle to keep up with. Unfortunately, recent graduates are not always paid their fair share for this type of work. But this type of work is where I got to experience some of the most incredible days (or nights) of my life, seeing true wilderness and experiencing wildlife and their mannerisms that you might have only read about in textbooks. It’s hard work, and you need passion to do it, but you can see many things that most people could never experience.
3: Regulation Changes/Recovery Permits For those of you who have experienced my Conservation History lecture during camp, you know I am passionate about environmental regulation and what it means to the public. Before entering the environmental workforce, I didn’t realize how often regulations change!
My first real ‘big girl job’ in the ecological field started in 2013. Since then, the definition of Waters of the United States (WOUS) has changed six times (2015, 2017, 2018, 2020, 2021, 2023)! Six times, the definition of my job duties changed. Six times, I have had to re-learn how to permit impacts and how to best mitigate impacts to help my company and clients. If I hadn’t learned to keep up with the changes in regulations, being stubborn and not wanting to change, I would have worked my way out of my job. Additionally, almost 300 species have been added to the Endangered Species List since 2013. That’s 300 new survey techniques, regulations, permitting, and mitigation requirements that may impact my day-to-day job.
I mentioned previously that the environmental field is growing because of changes in rules, and this is a small example of that job security. As we as a nation hopefully become more environmentally conscious, we will desperately need people who understand the regulations and how they impact current and future industries on the consulting side. On the other hand, the government needs people to study these essential changes to regulation and help draft new regulations to protect the public interests. There is not a shortage of work, but currently, there is a shortage of positions compared to the number of recent graduates.
You may also need to be permitted to survey for a specific species. If you have been on the job boards, you might have seen qualification requests for a US Fish and Wildlife (USFWS) Section 10 Recovery Permit. USFWS Section 10 allows a project or person to have the ability to take an endangered species. Take is defined as handling or, in some instances, harming/harvesting the endangered individual. A Section 10 Recovery permit defines you to USFWS as a person trained to identify, process, and monitor endangered species listed on your permit. Well, how do you get one of those? You need to know people who already have them! Here is that pesky networking because to apply for a Section 10 Recovery Permit, you must have been listed on survey permits previously led by other permitted biologists. You need to put your time working in teams led by the permitted biologists, make sure your name is always included in the paperwork, and keep track of all the permits you have been named on. Not only do you need to be trained by a permitted biologist, but you will also need to have at least one, preferably two or more, permitted biologists submit letters of recommendation to USFWS with your application. So, you are tasked with finding a permitted biologist who does the work you are interested in, conducting the fieldwork to find the endangered or threatened species (which, if they were easy to find, the species wouldn’t be endangered) to a satisfactory degree showing competence, then apply to USFWS with multiple letters of recommendation, to get one recovery permit. It’s a lot; you can see how some people dedicate their careers to one species. You may need to reflect on whether that is the path for you.
Overall, there is job security and future growth in the environmental workforce. I have high hopes that additional job opportunities will continue to open. This blog post isn’t meant to scare you away from aspects of environmental work but to help shine a light on some elements that often get overlooked in college. I wasn’t prepared for the long field days or the constant rule changes, but they made my career exciting. I wish all of you the best in your future endeavors!
The photos used in this blog belong to the author.
Three Things I Wish I Knew about Going into the Environmental Workforce
Posted: September 14, 2024 by Katie Mace
This week’s blog is a guest post written by Kala, a 2008 Bucktails alum. Kala is a Project Manager with Environmental Solutions & Innovations (ESI), where she works as a Protected Species Regulatory Manager. Her career has taken her all across North America working with many different species – both terrestrial and aquatic.
As I go into my 12th year in the environmental workforce, I decided to reflect on the things that caught me off guard as I advanced through my career. Working for multiple consulting firms, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada, and a mitigation banking company has given me a slightly unique perspective of what many young graduates go through in their job searches. I found three things that stood out in my experiences the most.
1: How Niche Environmental Work Is
The environmental workforce is a very small subsect of the overall job opportunities with an overwhelmingly high job demand. Each year, it grows more prominent due to changes in regulations, innovative technologies, and a general acknowledgment of need and appreciation that hasn’t always been the standard opinion. While there is job security and a future of growth, it can be a formidable workforce to break into.
Historically, once you got an environmental job with a company or government agency, you stayed with them throughout your career; you see that with the older generations who have held their positions for 20-30+ years. Many government positions allow you to build a career (and pension) with just one agency to this day. Consulting work is much faster paced and less likely to develop your career with one company because there is almost too much work to go around.
However, there is a high bar of entry for those positions. Long Field hours with minimal pay, unpaid internships without housing for research opportunities, traveling far and wide for weeks at a time, living out of horror story motels, and not knowing the right person to talk to or when can delay your advancement in the environmental industry. Everyone in the game knows someone else, and networking is critical in this field of work because the market is saturated with new graduates seeking the same jobs as you.
Unfortunately, a passion for the environment and good grades normally aren’t enough to get you a job outside of college or high school; that’s your foundation. You need a strong foundation, an understanding of science and a love or curiosity for it. Still, it would be best if you also did outreach to build the framework of your career. The framework is where things can get complicated because these are your internships, clubs, community events, WLA outreach, and mentorships that help you build that network of people you need to know to find jobs. You will always stand out more with a handshake at a youth fishing mentorship event than on a sheet of paper on their desk.
2: Fieldwork
Maybe it was my naivete, but there were some aspects of fieldwork I didn’t anticipate, but they ended up being my favorite reasons for fieldwork. First and foremost, unless you have done some backcountry camping/backpacking/hiking, most people have not experienced true wilderness or had to depend on themselves for survival. You must be prepared for anything, whether you are minutes from home or hundreds of miles away when conducting fieldwork. Not only do you need to pack in the gear you need to perform your work, but you also need everything you need to survive the day. That can lead to a heavy pack. I’ve worked with unfortunate souls who thought a Snickers bar and bottle of Mt. Dew was enough to keep them going for a job that was two miles of bushwhacking before we even got to the survey site in the middle of summer. By lunch, I was sharing my water with them, creating a dangerous situation for us due to the heat. I’ve fallen off cliffs while walking a survey line, tore my MLC, and was ‘stuck’ in a valley bottom. My choice was to attempt to crawl a mile uphill to the parked truck or walk three miles out of the stream bed to the nearest road intersection; luckily, my co-workers helped by going and getting the truck and driving around the mountain to where the stream met the road. I was able to limp my way out. But if I didn’t have the spare bandanas with me, I wouldn’t have been able to splint my leg to stabilize it.
Access isn’t always an option for fieldwork; dirt roads don’t reach that far into the woods, and in many cases, the old roads are impassable. Your work vehicle often becomes your lifeline, holding spare equipment, a storm shelter, and your favorite nap spot. Usually, your vehicle is far away, and it quickly becomes your favorite thing to see after a long day of work (that sweet, sweet AC).
Site access can also impact your job times. Say you are conducting migratory bird surveys for clients who need to know where they can and can’t work due to the nesting birds. Bird surveys start thirty minutes after sunrise (to make it easy, we will say 5:30am). Your motel is an hour away from your access to the site, but you need to check a portion of the project that takes you forty minutes to hike into from your vehicle; that’s not accounting for breakfast or other morning rituals, so that means your workday starts at the very latest 3:30am. Your entire workday could be done by noon!
A counter to this point is mist netting for bats; those surveys start at sundown and can go until 3-4am, depending on the effort needed. What if you are working for a company that does both types of surveys, and one week you are assigned bat work, and the next you are on birds?
Those are long, exhausting hours many people struggle to keep up with. Unfortunately, recent graduates are not always paid their fair share for this type of work. But this type of work is where I got to experience some of the most incredible days (or nights) of my life, seeing true wilderness and experiencing wildlife and their mannerisms that you might have only read about in textbooks. It’s hard work, and you need passion to do it, but you can see many things that most people could never experience.
3: Regulation Changes/Recovery Permits
For those of you who have experienced my Conservation History lecture during camp, you know I am passionate about environmental regulation and what it means to the public. Before entering the environmental workforce, I didn’t realize how often regulations change!
My first real ‘big girl job’ in the ecological field started in 2013. Since then, the definition of Waters of the United States (WOUS) has changed six times (2015, 2017, 2018, 2020, 2021, 2023)! Six times, the definition of my job duties changed. Six times, I have had to re-learn how to permit impacts and how to best mitigate impacts to help my company and clients. If I hadn’t learned to keep up with the changes in regulations, being stubborn and not wanting to change, I would have worked my way out of my job. Additionally, almost 300 species have been added to the Endangered Species List since 2013. That’s 300 new survey techniques, regulations, permitting, and mitigation requirements that may impact my day-to-day job.
I mentioned previously that the environmental field is growing because of changes in rules, and this is a small example of that job security. As we as a nation hopefully become more environmentally conscious, we will desperately need people who understand the regulations and how they impact current and future industries on the consulting side. On the other hand, the government needs people to study these essential changes to regulation and help draft new regulations to protect the public interests. There is not a shortage of work, but currently, there is a shortage of positions compared to the number of recent graduates.
You may also need to be permitted to survey for a specific species. If you have been on the job boards, you might have seen qualification requests for a US Fish and Wildlife (USFWS) Section 10 Recovery Permit. USFWS Section 10 allows a project or person to have the ability to take an endangered species. Take is defined as handling or, in some instances, harming/harvesting the endangered individual. A Section 10 Recovery permit defines you to USFWS as a person trained to identify, process, and monitor endangered species listed on your permit. Well, how do you get one of those? You need to know people who already have them! Here is that pesky networking because to apply for a Section 10 Recovery Permit, you must have been listed on survey permits previously led by other permitted biologists. You need to put your time working in teams led by the permitted biologists, make sure your name is always included in the paperwork, and keep track of all the permits you have been named on. Not only do you need to be trained by a permitted biologist, but you will also need to have at least one, preferably two or more, permitted biologists submit letters of recommendation to USFWS with your application. So, you are tasked with finding a permitted biologist who does the work you are interested in, conducting the fieldwork to find the endangered or threatened species (which, if they were easy to find, the species wouldn’t be endangered) to a satisfactory degree showing competence, then apply to USFWS with multiple letters of recommendation, to get one recovery permit. It’s a lot; you can see how some people dedicate their careers to one species. You may need to reflect on whether that is the path for you.
Overall, there is job security and future growth in the environmental workforce. I have high hopes that additional job opportunities will continue to open. This blog post isn’t meant to scare you away from aspects of environmental work but to help shine a light on some elements that often get overlooked in college. I wasn’t prepared for the long field days or the constant rule changes, but they made my career exciting. I wish all of you the best in your future endeavors!
The photos used in this blog belong to the author.
Category: Youth Blog