In this episode of K9 Conservationists, Kayla speaks with Gael Sanchez about joining the field of ecology and conservation.
Science Highlight: Curtailment as a successful method for reducing bat mortality at a southern Australian wind farm
Links Mentioned in the Episode:
Where to find Gael: Website | Instagram
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Transcript (AI-Generated)
Gael Sanchez
Mon, Jan 02, 2023 7:58PM • 1:08:07
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
people, field, job, dog, position, wildlife, curtailment, project, technicians, biologist, area, ecology, wind farm, day, questions, important, paid, skills, tw, helping
SPEAKERS
Gael Sanchez, Kayla Fratt
Kayla Fratt
Hello and welcome to the K9Conservationists podcast where we’re positively obsessed with conservation detection dogs join us every week to discuss detection, training, animal welfare, conservation, biology and everything in between. I’m Kayla Fratt, one of the cofounders of K9Conservationists, where we trained dogs to detect data for land managers, researchers, agencies, and NGOs. Today, I’m absolutely thrilled to be talking to Gael Sanchez about getting into the field of ecology and conservation, particularly through like a less traditional route. Gael doesn’t work with conservation dogs, but we talk to a lot of dog people who don’t do conservation yet, but want to get into into the field. And we do also talk to a lot of dog people on this show who don’t do conservation. So I’m trying to shift that balance a little bit by also joining, bringing in some ecologist and conservation biologist who don’t necessarily do dogs. So, Gael, welcome to the podcast. Why don’t you start out with telling us a little bit about yourself and your job?
Gael Sanchez
Hi, so wonderful to be here. Thank you so much for having me. My name is Gael Sanchez, and I am the lead inland wildlife biologist for the Bay Mills Indian community. I work in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, just outside of Brimley, Michigan, which is just past Sioux Sainte Marie. So sort of on the right hand side of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, very, very close to Canada. So we’re like right over the bridge from Canada. Some of the work we do are like on the waters between US and Canada. So you can really kind of imagine those cold snowy areas up there. It’s a wonderful place to work.
Kayla Fratt
Oh, my goodness. Yeah. Do you do y’all get just crazy amounts of lake effect snow up there and the winters or –
Gael Sanchez
Somewhat, not as much as the Western Upper Peninsula. They have gotten dumped on this year. They’ve already got a couple of like six inches, eight inch snows. And we’ve had, you know, one day we have a little other but like by the later in the winter, we’ll definitely have a good amount. Like we have some sometimes where I go out to hike and if I forget my snowshoes, I’m up to my hips and snow.
Kayla Fratt
Yep. Yeah, I think we talked about this during the pre-interview. But I grew up about an hour and a half from the western edge of the Upper Peninsula. And we used to I was a competitive cross country skier. So it was always, almost every weekend, we’re driving an hour and a half kind of in the early season in particular to go go hit up that lake effect snow and yeah, I just remember being like a little kid and just going there for the first time and seeing like 10 foot snow drifts. Oh, this place is amazing. It’s heaven.
Gael Sanchez
It’s absolutely incredible. It’s just such a beautiful place in the winter.
Kayla Fratt
Yeah, yeah, no, and I’ve never made it that far east. So it’ll be cool to hear a little bit more about that. But before we get to it, we are going to jump in. So we have a science highlight, which was pre-recorded and submitted by our friends over at scarless ecology. So we’ll let you all listen to that now.
Hi, everyone. My name is Stevie Florent, and I’m Head of Research and Development at Skylos Ecology in Victoria, Australia. And I’ll be bringing you today science highlight. So the title of the paper that me and my colleagues have recently published is curtailment as a successful method for reducing pet mortality at a southern Australian wind farm. This was published in Austral ecology this year, and my colleagues were Emma Bennett of Elmo B ecology, Mark vernasca and Matthew Gibson at BIOSIS and Alex Jackson and Elizabeth Stark from symbolics. So, let’s get started. What was my study question? Well, the study question was is curtailment an effective strategy for reducing microbe fatalities at the Cape Nelson north wind farm in southwest Victoria, Australia. So a bit of background to this. Wind energy is critically important in our efforts to reduce and eventually stop anthropogenic climate change. But unfortunately, wind energy facilities to adversely affect wildlife through turbine collisions. Micro-bats are particularly susceptible to this, with fertility is estimated to be in the hundreds of 1000s per year in the USA and Canada alone. And this is not great for a few reasons. Firstly, because we just can’t quantify what this means due to a global lack of population data for microbots. Secondly, they have long lived, meaning any considerable loss is potentially unsustainable. And lastly, microbeads a voracious insectivores, consuming up to half their body mass in a single night with potential benefits for agriculture and ultimately reduced pesticide use. So what can we do about it? Well, in the northern hemisphere, Kittleman is considered the most successful method of reducing fat Strax. This involves increasing cutting speed, ie the wind speed that the turbine starts spinning up during periods of high bat activity, which are when wind speeds are under six meters per second. from dusk to dawn during the summer to autumn period. But despite the overwhelming evidence of MetalMan effectiveness in the northern hemisphere, there has been no curtailment study yet in Australia. So we set out to ask if Gittleman is an effective strategy down here. So, our basic methodology was as follows. It was a before and after designed experiment with mortality surveys and backhaul monitoring from January to April in 2018 and 2019 with 2018 being before curtailment and 2019 during curtailment. This January to April period coincides with the summer Autumn period when the greatest number of bad deaths occur in the northern hemisphere. In the study, cattlemen involve changing the cutting speed from three meters per second to 4.5 meters per second, which was a voluntary change by Pacific hydro who own the wind farm. And I’m sorry for these metric values as well, if you’re an imperial user, conservation detection dog teams conducted the mortality surveys across all 11 turbines. And this is because dogs are just so much better than humans at these surveys. The sizes of these bats are incredible. They range from four grams to 150 grams with an average of 15 grams. So without dogs locating these tiny bats, we wouldn’t be collecting accurate data and wouldn’t be able to know the real impacts of these studies. Dogs are what makes what make these studies possible and meaningful. Acoustic surveys were conducted simultaneously as a proxy for bat activity to determine if any change in fatality rates could be explained by a background change in bat activity levels as well. So what did we find? Well, we found that increasing turbine current speed by that 1.5 meters per second, reduced bat fatalities by 54%. Across the 200 nights and monitoring, that activity did not decrease following curtailment, but actually non significantly increased, meaning curtailment was the principal explanatory variable. The carcasses of eight different species were found during the study, with white striped free tailed bats most impacted possibly due to their foraging preference for open areas, such as what this wind farm occupies. So what are some future directions I see for these studies? And what limitations should practitioners be aware of? Well, one of the things we were so excited about with this study is that it was the first of its kind in Australia. So we really hope that this study encourages others to conduct further curtailment study trials across Australia. Given the significant gap in this area compared to the Northern Hemisphere, the curtailment employed in the study was also relatively small adjustment, and it would be interesting to see how curtailment of 6.0 meters per second would look to improve our understanding of the relationship between cutting spades and bad fatality rates. Also, some dog versus human detectability studies at Australian wind farms would also contribute to the growing literature in this area. In terms of limitations that practitioners should be aware of your detectability rates are really important to ensure you’re collecting accurate data. And that’s why detection dog teams are so important for these surveys. There are a number of safety concerns you should also be aware of as well. So in Australia, for example, hazards on wind farms can include but are not limited to grass seeds, hate snakes and livestock. And you should always prioritize your dogs and your own safety in these situations. Be aware of your location and what hazards are relevant to you. Thanks so much for listening. I hope you found this interesting.
Kayla Fratt
And then last thing before we get to the interview with Gael is we do have a review highlight. Y’all have been giving us lots of lovely reviews lately. These really make my day and they do help other people find this show which is important for helping the field of conservation detection dogs because again, one of our biggest issues in this field is people just don’t know we exist. They don’t know that they could be involved. They don’t know we could help with their research. So your reviews are a tiny way to help us out with that. So this review is from MaddieD77 and says, “Wow, thank you so much for the whole canine conservationist team and to Kayla for being a resource in this field. The Knowledge Base is so well rounded there are a science highlights for recommended papers to read book clubs digging into the nuts and bolts of theory and coaching called which are helpful even if you are a lower member to your viewing them and those.” As an aside to that, she’s referencing our Patreon there. And then the review continues. “Although I imagine it will only be a matter of time before I want to get personal feedback myself, the podcast is also in a conversational tone and will be easily understood by non science folks. Give it a listen, and thank you so much!” If you all haven’t, if you’re listening and you haven’t reviewed the show yet, which I know lots of you haven’t because I can see the numbers and all also compare that to number of reviews, please go ahead and hop on to Apple or Spotify allows reviews as well now, they really help us up. So, Gael, why don’t we start out with you telling us a little bit about your path into your current role? Because you really, you’re getting to work in a really beautiful place with some really cool partners and really, really interesting species. So how did you manage to get there?
Gael Sanchez
Yeah, so definitely, one of the things with wildlife biologists and fisheries a lot of ecologist in general is that we have such different paths to get where we are mine overall is somewhat of a traditional path. But you know, it varies a lot from other people as well. I don’t have any family that was in wildlife or anything related to it growing up, I now have a cousin who’s just a little bit older than me, who’s also a tribal biologist in New Mexico. But I didn’t know anybody growing up who was in this, I didn’t really have any connections to the field, I just had no idea that first off, like really even existed in some ways, but also just having it in it. And I was always really drawn towards the, like nature videos, the nature of the US. And that was like my first gateway into it was every Sunday, I’d watch those and I told my parents, you know, I want to do what they’re doing. And they, you know, they know, that’s cool. That’s really neat. And then they have no idea what to do with that. But they always fostered my love of animals, they took me to the zoo, and they’ve watched nature videos with me all of that type of stuff. And then when I got to undergrad, you know, I thought, Okay, well, I want to be a biologist, because the people on the shows are biologists, so I’m going to abolish biology degree. And I went to an in state school because it was affordable. And, you know, I didn’t want to go into debt for it as much as I had to so. So I thought, you know, I’ll go in state, New Mexico State, New Mexico, as a state has a really great lottery scholarship program where their lottery money, income extra from that goes back to university students. So it helps to pay for tuition for in state students. So it’s a really great resource. So I thought, you know, I want to go and state to save money, but I wanted to be away from home. So I went to the school down in Las Cruces, New Mexico State University, which is about three hours away from home. And I started off in a biology degree because I thought, oh, I want to be a biologist. That’s what they’re doing. And so I started off taking my classes for about the first year and a half. And then I got in to my second year. And my undergraduate advisors chatted with me, and he said, Okay, well tell me what you want to do for your career. And I told him about it. He said, You know, it sounds like you want to be a wildlife biologist, you know, that we actually have a specific degree for no idea at all. So, so he said, you know, you started off in the biology track, and we actually now have a combo degree. That’s called conservation ecology and New Mexico State. And it kind of combines the rigors of biology where you’re taking like organic chemistry and biochemistry and physics one and two, with some of like, the more hands on of the wildlife field, and you’re taking classes from both. So we had me try out taking a general wildlife management class, and I just absolutely adored it, and I switched over from there. So I really recommend for people if you are not sure, if you want to switch over, spend the semester taking a class or two and a new in the field that you’re thinking of going into you do not have to switch right away, you take that class, see how you like it, and then you can make the decision from there. And for me, it was what helps make that decision. I loved it. It led to my first internship, where I’d worked for the Bureau of Land Management for a summer as a technician and I was able to really immerse myself into that degree. So from there, I did a couple of internships during undergrad I also saw I was very busy during undergrad I was a full time athlete, you ran cross country and indoor track in the in the winter, and then outdoor track in the spring. So we were
Gael Sanchez
we were traveling and practicing all year round. So practice every single day of the year, except for summers when we would be practicing on our own wherever we were. And then we would be competing almost every weekend and traveling across the country. So I was very busy with that as well as taking 15 plus hours per semester we had to be 15 to be qualified as athletes. And then I was also working for the last couple years of undergrad I started working in my advisors lab doing data entry if you like about 10 hours a week. And that was a really great way to get into it. I like so many people discount data entry and think it’s not worth it, but it teaches you first off, like what the data should look like you’re taking somebody else’s data, somebody who knows what they’re doing, and you’re entering it in and you see how they do it. You see the sort of notes they’re taking, you see the setup that they have, and it’s also a really great way to make contacts and connections. You know, you’re getting a foot into a lab. You’re getting to know graduate students. I still like I talked to the students who I entered data for like the Last weekend, she like messaged me on like Twitter. And we still we still have those connections. I’m still connected to the to my advisor from undergrad because of that. And I still get emails for job opportunities and things from him. So those connections really do matter. And so I did that. During the year that I did. Like I mentioned, I worked for the Bureau of Land Management in New Mexico, for the summer between my junior and senior from between my sophomore and junior year. And then between my junior and senior year I worked at and research education for undergraduates opportunity through the National Science Foundation. And I worked at the University of Idaho doing an internship, these are great. If any of you guys are in undergrad and you’re looking for an opportunity to try out doing research, I highly recommend the REU program. They are fully funded, they take place across the country at all kinds of universities at museums. And so you get paid as you do them usually get a place to live. A lot of times you are housed with a bunch of other undergraduate students. It’s actually where I met my now husband was we were technicians, or interns there he was on the physics side of things. And so there were like 20 of us all housed together tons of undergrads, we got to live together, we got to do our each do our own projects. It was super fun. They had us doing rafting trips in our on our weekends and things and it was absolutely amazing. And you’re gonna get to travel across country. And you also get to be like a mini member of a lab, because you basically have a tiny little project for the summer, like mine was studying pygmy rabbits and looking at temperature sensors and, and things for reading the temperatures that they were experiencing. So I was working with pygmy rabbits and cottontails. Yeah, and also helping out with the graduate students project. So I was running my own mini project, I learned how to how to develop a project, how to run a project and collect data, I learned how to put it all together in a PowerPoint and present it at the end of the summer. And then I actually got to take it the next summer and present it at a conference and the REU internship paid for that as well. And it was just absolutely amazing. So I went to my first conference with it, I got to present data, I got so many amazing connections, we have the I’m going this coming week to a conference where I’m going to be hanging out with the graduate slitter, the graduate students who I was in the lab with there, because it’s just such great friendships through that. So highly recommend that program. Also, the advisor for who was whose lab I was working in there ended up knowing in the future my graduate school advisor and gave a really good review for me, and recommendation. And that helped me get my graduate school project. So you just really need to foster those relationships, networking in this field in general, whether you’re doing conservation dog work, whether you are a wildlife ecologist, whether you’re both or any type of that those networking opportunities are so important. You need to foster those and really built upon them and keep in contact. Don’t be afraid to go back and email somebody you worked for three years ago, they’ll remember you. They’re going to be excited to hear what you’re doing with your life now. So, so I did that. And then after I graduated undergraduate, I spent about two years bouncing across the country doing seasonal technician positions. So I worked first for the Idaho fishing game. I worked in the upper Panhandle in Coeur d’Alene area doing both tracking. Yes. Oh, yeah. So I was basically tracking the wolves. I was putting up game cameras and I was advising on where to track these animals and I was helping rent trap lines as well. And then I worked that when I worked for a few months, and then I jumped over to Arizona and New Mexico. I worked on the the New Mexico side the US Fish and Wildlife side of the Mexican gray wolf recovery project. So I was six months there being like all the on the ground, hands on stuff doing all the fields work there. And that was a pretty cool opportunity. One thing that I will say about those opportunities is that I was very, very privileged and that I was able to take them because they were basically unpaid positions. The first one I got $15 A day the second one I got $20 A day for and they provided some level of housing the first one was a tent and the second one was like a single wide. So they reach some level of housing but they I really advocate in this field for hourly paid positions a lot because of those positions because they were on set one hand it was the animals that I ate already always wanted to work with, you know, everyone dreams of working with these really big names species. And I wanted to work with wolves. It was something I grew up in New Mexico I really wanted to work with the Mexican Wolf and it was on one hand really incredible because I did get to work with those species and do some cool stuff. But on the other hand, it was really hard because we were overworked. We were underpaid we were because of that you end up being pretty under appreciated. A lot of projects, not all of them, but it just doesn’t cost them any more to work you for eight hours versus 16 hours. And if when push comes to shove, and the project’s busy and things need to get done, and the biologists are limited in hours, they’re going to have to turn to the techs and have them overworked. And it just, it becomes hard. We had at one port where we worked for three months straight without a day off. And it was it was mentally very, very, very tough. We finally advocated for ourselves to get a day off every 10 days, that was a big deal. But it was worth it. $15 today,
Kayla Fratt
that one was $20. Oh, well, in that case, that’s fine.
Gael Sanchez
I was just making bank and, you know,
Kayla Fratt
we’re not talking about like, 1923.
Gael Sanchez
Now, this is just a few years ago. Yeah. You know. And it’s hard. And you know, you get these arguments that well, these projects are underfunded. And it’s like, well, you know, as supervisors on these projects, one of your goals should be to push for your technicians to be paid to really push for that grant funding to work on it as part of your job to be able to get further funding to pay those technicians if you’re going to have them because everyone deserves a fair hourly wage.
Kayla Fratt
Yeah, it is a horrible, like, it’s this horrible cycle that this field is in where everyone is so used to it. And it’s so normalized, like I was just on the a&m job board the other day. Like, there was a position that, you know, I clicked on, because it was Kenya and I was like, oh, you know, okay, tell me more about Eastern Africa, let’s talk about and like, when you get into the, the International stuff, I think it just is a whole step worse, but it was you were gonna pay $3,600 to go volunteer to do what sounded like very hard, long field days, it was a giraffe monitoring project in the Masai Mara, with radio transmitters and like getting like pretty technical photos, and it wasn’t like you were going to go and like, bottle feed. Bush babies are something which like, it’s still hard work and still should be paid. But it didn’t. It did not sound like a volunteer position to me.
Gael Sanchez
Now, that is very skilled labor. And you know, even like, it’s a big problem, like you were talking about, like bottle feeding animals like that is actually one of the places where they have the lowest pay, the worst treatment is in rehabilitation, it is a very hard field to get established. And it actually get paid for and people work literal years, either paying to have a position or completely unpaid. And it is just, you know, everyone deserves to be paid for the time and the work that they do and paid fairly, you know, we’re at the point now where it should be text get paid a minimum of $15 an hour in our fields. Truly, that should be really and truly that should be the minimum, we should just be going up from there. So you know, it’s hard, but that’s those positions are some of the reasons why I advocate so hard for it just because, you know, I went through it, I couldn’t really do much to change at the time. But I’m hoping that the more and more we push, the harder we work, the more change that we will make. So but But going back to the positions I worked after that kind of what opened my eyes to is I actually worked position a couple of positions after that for Colorado Parks Wildlife and those were hourly paid positions. And our boss in those both positions. Especially the second one I worked where they were amazing. They were really great about making sure we took our weekends making sure we didn’t overwork making sure we were enjoying ourselves getting lots of great experience and they were incredible. And then it was very hands on positions. The first one I worked for the newborn neonate mule deer capture project. So we were up in the mountains and we were between Meeker and rifle in Colorado and we were pitching the newborn newborn baby mule deer just the cutest things in existence. They are they really are. And it was really great experience in telemetry and tracking and it was tons of fun, great crew and I just loved it. And then after that I worked for the Blackbeard capture crew outside of Durango, Colorado. And that was a great experience. Bears are awesome to work with, especially black bears. Black bears are pretty much hands on everyday when you’re doing captures because you throw a cage out there and a lot of times you throw the throw some food in the back and they go right in. They are not afraid it’s much easier than catching wolves. You know sometimes you have some challenging ones where you have to use like hold or things like that, but they’re it’s a very so if you you know if anybody’s interested in a lot of hands on those black bear capture. Opportunities are a great one to get lots of hands on experience, lots of sample taking experience tracking, things like that, but I truly love that experience. I had a great time working for Colorado Parks and Wildlife both positions, and it’s just a beautiful area.
Kayla Fratt
Yeah, I’d love Durango.
Gael Sanchez
Absolutely still I think and then after that I worked for the University of Georgia, and that an environmental education area, so I was helping to care for the captive raptors, the Hawks, the owls, the kestrels, animals like that. And I was doing education outreach, that really kind of spurred some of my passion and my ability to do education and outreach. It taught me how to teach classes, it taught me how to build curriculum, it taught me how to teach a whole range of people everywhere, from Kindergarteners through college kids that would come to our Environmental Education Center for days on it. And then we were teaching them, you know, everything from how to canoe and taking classes to local history, to herpetology, and, and the Raptor classes to dissecting fish and doing ecology and, and water quality classes. And it was, you know, it was really fun. And it taught you how to teach different age groups, how to cater data to them, but also, you know, even just how to deal with the class that’s misbehaving, you know, there’s things like, these skills that you don’t think you’ll need later. And then all of a sudden, they very much come in handy, because everyone thinks that doing wildlife work is going to mean working with animals, but you know, it is pretty much 90% people. So much, so much. Just how can you deal with people? How can you get that information out there? So very good skill to have?
Kayla Fratt
Yeah, definitely. Yeah, it’s, that’s such a funny, it’s such a common through line in both wildlife, bio, conservation, ecology, whatever, whatever category you fall into, and the dog training stuff, where, yeah, people get into either one of these fields, often thinking that they’re gonna get to spend all their time, either with puppies or, you know, with, you know, rehabbing raptors, or telemetry or whatever it is. And it’s like, no, it’s, it’s a lot of people. The biology side is more grant writing, the dark side is more business tax crap. And either way, you’re underpaid. So join the fun, we love it here.
Gael Sanchez
We’re working on it. But it’s we
Kayla Fratt
really are. So let’s, let’s kind of move on a little bit to thinking about what are some of the beliefs that people have about entering the field of conservation or ecology? Particularly, do people have these preconceived notions or limits that they think about how one could possibly enter this field?
Gael Sanchez
Definitely, there are so many ideas of and limitations on who can be a virologist, this is a really big thing, especially with this idea of the sort of more traditional path into being a biologist, you know, I have my undergraduate I have lots of field experience, I have my graduate degree. And now I have a full time job, it was not quite linear like that there was bouncing around. After I did grad school, I went back and did some tech work, and then I got a full time job. But there’s a lot of people who want to get into this field who might not even have undergraduate degrees. And there’s such limitation for them, there is such a barrier to inclusion on that level, where it’s viewed as you cannot possibly be doing science. If you have not taken classes at a traditional Western type school, and you couldn’t understand how it works, you couldn’t understand science, you couldn’t understand nature, there’s just there’s no way that you can if you don’t have this very traditional training. And so there is this huge block for that, as well as the issue that because a lot of times it does take many seasonal positions to establish yourself, there is this idea that you cannot come into this field if you are older, because a lot of people who are older, have families have homes have pets have so many things that limit you from being able to move around and do seasonal positions, or be able to afford working for next to nothing for years on end, because maybe they’re supporting kids or older parents or they have a mortgage or they have pets, so they can’t just move around and live in seasonal housing. And so it kind of creates this barrier for people who want to come into the fields later in life, even even past their early 20s. And something like that, you know, a lot of times you end up like living away from a partner and stuff like that, if you if you do that. So definitely those are some of the biggest barriers. And then when we talk about education wise, you know, I think that we’re causing this barrier, something that I’ve really kind of come to think more about and kind of had to challenge in my own head a little bit more is this idea that the way that our entire wildlife management model has been designed, and it is completely designed on this idea of the North American model of wildlife management, where we are based Allah Don’t hunting, we really are. But we’re also based on these very Western ideas of this idea of what role wildlife fills in people’s lives, what role wildlife has in our country, and in our ecosystem, and what the what the reason is for wildlife. And you know, it’s there to be hunted, it’s there to be used by us, it’s there to be a resource for people. And it’s really seen as a resource when you get into this idea. And you kind of expand beyond that, when you’re looking at, you know, more traditional views of this and the people who have been here so much longer than Western colonizers, when we get into traditional ecological knowledge, and we get into indigenous views, it is not viewed the same way. And we really need to step away in some some ways, we need to allow for more traditional ecological knowledge, we need to allow for a variety of ways for wildlife to be managed, we need to allow for more people to manage wildlife, not just these western educated biologists like me, we really need to allow these traditional ecologists to be able to manage wildlife, especially on their land, you know, traditional land, they need to be allowed to manage wildlife and manage it in the ways that are important to their people, and the ways that they have traditionally done it, we need to allow for more of this, and not all of those people are going to have undergraduate degrees, not all of those people are going to have Masters, not all of those people are going to have experience doing exactly what we expect in so many positions. And that just becomes such a limitation to so many people’s ability to get in the field. And it’s just we’re losing out on so much. We’re losing out on people with this incredible experience, this incredible tradition, incredible, you know, if you’re cutting out people who if you’re saying, Oh, well, you’re already 30, you can’t change careers and get into a new field, you are cutting out somebody who has so much incredible life experience to bring to our field. And so such a different way of viewing things, maybe they started off in psychology, you know, or maybe they started off as a single parent, or maybe they started off as somebody else entirely, or, you know, they have a view of wildlife and a view of ecology that is so different than the rest of us that we need. Because we get stuck in these ruts where we just sit here and we think well, this is how bats are studied. So of course, like we’re always going to study that’s like this, this is how you do it. And we’ll never deviate from that. But somebody else comes in and can change the study entirely and for the better if we’re just open to it.
Kayla Fratt
Ya know, I love that so much, as far as you know, not just some of these misconceptions on the potential biologist side, but also on the hiring side and thinking about why this can matter and why we want to be bringing more people in and learning from them. And it’s something that I think I’m hearing more and more of in more and more corners of the internet, but I’m always questioning whether that’s just me getting better at following better people or if that’s actually a sea change that we’re seeing in, in the industry anywhere. So do you have any? I don’t know, even necessarily how you would know this, because it’s so hard to we’re always in our little bubbles. But is this something that you’re seeing more and more discussion of maybe in some of the bigger spots like TW s or TNC or something where they are thinking where if we know if they’re, if they’re talking about it that it is really coming around more?
Gael Sanchez
I do think that there is more openness and more discussion of this. There is more talk about non traditional paths. There is more talk about a variety of backgrounds of getting more diversity within our fields, diversity of backgrounds, diversity of ethnicities, diversity of identities, there definitely is more we’re seeing it, it’s slow as anything else, but it’s up and coming. You know, organizations like the Wildlife Society and American Society of gemologists are doing a really great job of starting to push for this inclusion. And they’re doing it in ways that really do make a difference, you know, not just saying, Well, we’re going to like have like one more position here where for like a diversity hire, you know, they’re starting to provide scholarships for more people of diverse backgrounds to come to conferences, to be able to make connections and meet people. TW S has a group called the Ideas Network, one of their committees and they’re focused on diversity, equity and inclusion. And they have started providing scholarships for more scientists from different backgrounds to come to the conferences as well as TW s out in the field is a really great initiative for LGBTQ plus individuals. I’m part of that group and I absolutely love it. They’ve started providing spaces safe spaces for scientists who identify as LGBTQ to But start making connections no who’s safe in the field, you know, for them to start talking about people being more open as well of all ages and backgrounds so that we can start having more visibility in the field people can be their full selves, they’re also providing, they’re also providing some scholarships for students to go to conferences for students to research, it’s, and they’re also doing the pushing ally ship. They have their pledges and pins for people to wear to be really visible. They’re having events at this next upcoming annual meeting. And also on top of that, we have been working really hard I’ve been trying to help out but many others as well is we’re starting to really revamp and update things like codes of conduct and having real consequences for people who do not properly respect those codes of conduct and harass people and make places uncomfortable at conferences and associated events for the Wildlife Society and other groups. Michigan chapter we’re working on that a lot where we got a funding from national chapter to redo our code of conduct and have some visuals made up for that, to be able to, you know, not just say, we want more diversity, but make spaces safer for people and more comfortable to be for people to be in women and people from diverse backgrounds, people of diverse identities, to be able to be feel safer and be safer in those places and not have to go to a scientific conference and face harassment without having somebody to go to TW S has gotten butts person now, who’s going to be at the next meeting. And we’re looking to start start making that more available on a national level to chapters. And you know, my dream with that is make that available to anyone who’s a TW s member so that even if you’re facing it from you know, even a professor, you have somebody to go to, to say, I have you know, I have this issue, I need some help with this, what can I do, even if you don’t want to take direct action, they can give you guidance on it. And you know, by making the field a safer place for people, it’s actually going to make people more able and more willing to be part of this field. And then when you start seeing people of your background in this field, you feel more welcome. So those are very good steps to do. And I am seeing a lot of that on a national level really taking place. Part of that’s come through pushing very hard with uncomfortable conversations, you know, saying why do we only want 18 year olds as our technicians, you know, what about us a little bit more experienced? Or why can somebody not have this job if they have so much experience in ecology for so many years and don’t but don’t might not have an undergraduate degree or graduate degree, you know, looking at these diverse backgrounds and saying Why can’t these people be included? And like really pushing those uncomfortable conversations, questioning how things are and like hoping to make things better? Yeah,
Kayla Fratt
Yeah, well said.
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Kayla Fratt
So one of the things we’ve already touched on a little bit is, you know, this, this concept of particularly early career biologists or people who are trying to break into this field, running into a lot of the bear a lot of areas and you know, you mentioned like just horrific pay. Being a huge part, I personally, I actually never worked a tech job. Partially for that reason. I was like, I’m really sorry, I’ve gotta go lifeguard this summer. Like, I’ve got to have money to buy books, when the school year comes around. So I graduated school with a lot less experienced than I would have liked. So you know, there’s that the pay being an issue. A lot of like, focus on degrees, particularly in kind of later jobs. But what are some of the other things that maybe we need to be aware of and particularly even when you’re looking at like a call for applications or a job posting or whatever? How can we read those and be more savvy and yeah, we’ll go there and then I’ll I’ve got a follow ups.
Gael Sanchez
I think, first off being more open to people. You know, I think that we cut people off so quickly when we’re looking I know that we’re looking for a very specific applicant when a lot of people when you get a list of applicants and you’re looking for Okay, well this person has a degrees They’re probably going to be better and this person has experience in this. But like, you know, I found that sometimes one of the, sometimes some of the best things you run into is when you have more limited pools of applicants, you end up hiring people that have a different background than you were looking for. And they end up being incredible, and some of the best people and longest lasting at that job. So I think, you know, just being more open in your head, being more willing to interview, maybe doing more interviews, you know, sometimes we think, Oh, I don’t have that much time, I’ll only do a couple of interviews of these very top candidates, if they aren’t available. While you, you know, the next pile, maybe saying, you know, I’m going to take a full day here, or I’m going to take a couple of hours today, and really do like a whole series of internships, or this week is going to be the week for for interviews. And you know, it’s hard, because you don’t always have time for that. But sometimes it’s important to really just make time for that, and say, I’m going to interview a wider range of people right now, I’m not just going to interview two potential applicants, but also looking at the, you know, the skills that people have listed on there, and not just cutting them out, because they haven’t worked a tech position before, you know, maybe maybe having on your crew, maybe if you’re really looking for an experienced person, but you have a couple people in the crew, maybe bringing in one really experienced person, but then as your second as your second technician maybe being more open to somebody who doesn’t have experience just to allow for somebody else to enter the field and somebody else, especially, you know, we have we bring on technicians every year. And while our positions, can they include a whole range of stuff, they are somewhat entry level. So we have brought in plenty of people who are sometimes still in high school. And you know, when we have high schoolers working, and we have people who are very early in their careers, and maybe this is their first tech position. And before this, they worked at a grocery store, or they were in high school, they you know, or they took like, one class and in you know in biology and like back be enough or none of none of that at all. And just being more open to saying like you know, it not thinking that your job is so complicated, that somebody can’t come on to it and learn because people can learn it takes everyone a minute to adjust to a job. But your job is not as complex as you think it is with technicians.
Kayla Fratt
Yeah, no, I love that. And I, one of the things that I was kind of popping into my head is especially if you’re talking about high schoolers, or even someone who the difference between someone who has taken three years of college in a wildlife bio program, or conservation or ecology or whatever, and someone who doesn’t have that degree at all, maybe mostly a really solid understanding of photosynthesis and meiosis, which does not necessarily correlate with like, like most of us didn’t, even if you have a four year degree, like, I would still need a pretty solid refresher on telemetry even though I’ve, I’ve learned how to do it four or five times now. And yeah, so it’s, I think that’s a great point and really thinking about like, what are the skills that you need? And how can you build that team? And then maybe from from the applicant side? What are what are things that maybe they can do in their resume writing or an even before that in that job search of really finding something because, you know, I know, when I get on the Texas a&m job board or whatever like that, there’s so many postings all the time, how do you wade through them? And then what would you do? So okay, there’s, that’s two questions. So let’s, let’s go with that for the applicant size. And then I have a third one that I really need to ask you.
Gael Sanchez
Yes. So first off, find your strengths. You know, there are so many strengths that you have that probably apply to these jobs right now. Can you drive a truck? Can you drive four wheel drive? Have you ever been on an ATV? Hat? Do you hike? Do you know how to read a map? Have you ever used GPS before? Maybe you have? Maybe not? Can you use a compass, these are things that you can learn at home. And, you know, if you have if you have 30 minutes at home, learn how to use a compass. That’s a really good skill to have. Or, you know, learn how to drive four wheel drive. If you have a friend with a truck, say Hey, can I like can you take me around and I practice driving a truck for a while. If you know how to tow things, really great skill, if you know how to you know if you know anything about boats, that’s really great. Those are really good skills or even things about you know, being organized, you know, and you know, taking notes on things that’s really good too are saying that you’re very good at observation, you know, are you somebody who is a maybe a birdwatcher in your spare time. That’s an incredible skill and that’s something that you can build up in your own time, start learning how to identify plants in your area. That is something that a lot of biologists who study things like wildlife and general conservation, they don’t have a lot of plant knowledge, you know, we go back and we have to refresh ourselves if we aren’t focused in it. So if you can start building that up, go around your, you know, go on a walk through your neighborhood and start like teaching yourself plants. And that can be useful because you’ll also start learning like invasive plants to which ones in need of plants which are invasive, very important knowledge. Yeah.
Kayla Fratt
Like I naturalist and secrets, it’s so much easier to teach yourself that sort of stuff. You know, those apps aren’t perfect, but gosh, they’re a really cool place to start. And I know, I was offered an REU position, which ended up not working out. Because we didn’t realize that I couldn’t do it that year, because I had applied after graduation. And you you need to have at least another semester ahead of you. But I basically emailed this researcher and was like, Hey, I’m vaccinated against rabies. I speak Spanish, I can drive sticks drift on muddy roads. And I’ve rock climbed before, and it was a bat project, and in Panama, and he was like, Oh, you speak Spanish, and you can drive stick and everything stick down here, and you already have your rabies, and, you know, like, it was nothing about that experience that got him, you know, that moved my application directly to the top of a very competitive process. You know, exactly. Rock climbing, you know, that was his tech the season before that had not really been comfortable at all climbing up anything to get into the roosting areas, and had had a very, very hard time with that, which is very reasonable. But you know, like, even your recreational activities, may or may not be super duper helpful.
Gael Sanchez
Yes, it’s, it’s really, it’s really like, you know, there’s so many things that you can either take from your own life, and really, it’s just about phrasing it correctly. In a cover letter, it’s about really playing to your strengths, or little things that you can develop, that are very easy to develop, you know, on your own, and start to work on identification of animals, just so many things that you can do to make yourself a strong applicant. That just to just raise above everybody else. Yeah,
Kayla Fratt
some stuff to fill out that little skills box on your on your resume. And, you know, and like for our dog folks, like cats, we have so much observation, we have so much risk as a dynamic risk assessment, you know, like, what is taking your dog on an off leash hike, if not being constantly aware of the situation and assessing and updating and, you know, reading animal behavior, like holy crap, we get so much practice with that. And we can, we can spin it on our resumes to help us get these jobs. And once you get your foot in the door, and you get that experience, and you can start networking, bring it back to the beginning. It doesn’t ever, maybe quite get easy, but it helps.
Gael Sanchez
It’s practice, practice makes perfect. You know, you it gets better. And it’s just about spinning yourself in the right way. You know, there are so many jobs right now that like I have zero experience. And there’s so many species I’ve never worked with that I could spin in the right way and say, Look, I have skills, A, B, C, and D. And this is how they apply over here, even though I never worked with this species before.
Kayla Fratt
Yeah, I mean, I got hired as a consultant to go to Kenya. I’ve never having never been on the continent, you know? And it was it was about being adaptable. And also yes, of course, I knew the dogs. And I knew I knew that side of the job. But as far as, you know, like, I had to ask so many dumb questions on my first day about like, okay, what are there’s a lot of bugs around here. What are the ones I really need to make sure I don’t touch. You know, and
Gael Sanchez
just being willing to ask questions. You know, if you’re looking at you asked about job postings, and you know, how to find them, like, sometimes you’ll find I was talking to a student the other day, and she was saying, you know, how do I know which jobs to apply for? How do I know if I’m a good fit? We’ll start off by reading through to the description, reading through the skills and then see, okay, do I fit, you know, maybe 50% of these skills, you’re never they’re never going to get a candidate that fits. 100% ever, ever, ever, ever. They are trying to get the closest to that, that they can or somebody that’s 50% but also vibes really well with their crew. You know, that’s really important to how you do an interview. So apply to things that you are like 50% You know, like fitting for the different skills and requirements and things like that, like be willing to go for it. But also if you’re unclear of whether you this is a job that you would enjoy or that’s a good fit for you. It’s not just if you’re a good fit for the job is it’s whether the job is a good fit for you. You can reach out to the company you can read reach out to the biologist to the researcher listed there or the HR department. And you can ask for more details on a position, you can email them and say, Hey, I’m very interested in applying for this position, but I have a few questions, do you have time to answer them, that is a great way to make a connection there and to stand out too, because so many people are just going to shoot out a bunch of applications or apply to it. And then you’re just a you’re just a resume on their computer, but then they have this one person who emailed them, and they had a conversation with them. Or maybe if you’re in the area, stopped by the office, talk to them in person, that will that can set you ahead big time and also answers questions for you. And shows you maybe maybe you do an email to them. And you know, it’s a wolf internship, and it’s, oh, all this stuff. And it’s amazing. But then you email them and you ask, you know, what does this job really ended entail? What is the day to day stuff looked like? And maybe it’s actually you’re solely checking game cameras, you are never interacting with the animals, you’re never you know, you’re just out like, which is, you know, game cameras, very, very useful skill to develop is really great. But if you already have that skill, and you’re looking for some animal handling experience, and that’s the whole reason for you applying for that job, by reaching out to that person, you get that answer, and you don’t waste your time, or
Kayla Fratt
you’ve just saved yourself a cover letter writing afternoon. And yeah, no. Well, and that kind of leads me to that next question of, I think one of the things that many of us struggle with in this field is this catch 22 of you’re looking at a job posting, and you’re like, wow, okay, pay is not there. It’s gonna be three months long, and I’m gonna have to come back to you had a great meme A while ago, I’m coming back to the a&m job board every, every three months. But it’s with a species that I really want. And I really, or it’s just an experience that I really want to have, you know, what, what are some of the factors that you would suggest people consider? Because I know I kind of go through this like, well, I don’t necessarily know, if I want to support the fact that they’re paying this poorly, or whatever, by lending this project, my support and my experience, but also, Gosh, darn it, I really want to work on you know, we’ll just keep picking on wolves, like, how cool would it be, you know? So, yeah, what would you recommend people to think about when they’re looking at some of those options?
Gael Sanchez
I would start first with, you know, yes, we all want to change how things are, we want to change the wages, but it’s not going to happen overnight. So if you decide to apply for one of those jobs, just be cautious, protect yourself, make sure that you are doing due diligence, researching the project, researching the agency, doing asking questions in the interview, because you are interviewing them too. They are not just interviewing you, it should not be a 10 minute interview, it should be a pretty drawn out interview where you are able to ask questions, almost every interview, they’ll say at the end, do you have any questions for us? And you should always have questions for them, not just because it makes you look good. But also because it that’s where you figure out if they’re a good fit for you, you need to be asking a whole list of questions about you know, about what the hours are, like, what, you know, what a regular day is, like, what the housing is, like, what the treatment is, like, what the vehicles, you know, are they in good condition? What are their safety measures? Like? Do they have a field safety plan? Can they walk you through it? You know, if you’re somebody from a background, maybe you are a black scientist, and you need to ask them pretty clearly, you know, ask them first off, have you had any technicians of color? What was their experience, like in this area? Are the ranchers in this area going to be dangerous for me? You know, do you have a field safety plan that includes talking to the ranchers ahead of time and introducing them to me in person? You know, do you there are things like, can I talk to a pest technician? That is a great one can I talk to past and current employees who have worked this position, and if they don’t let you that’s definitely a red flag. You want to get a very, you know, you want to get a clearer picture of it. And not just the current employees, but the past ones who don’t risk their job by being honest to you. And so there’s just I really, it really does involve due diligence, and really doing your homework, really coming with a list of questions, write them down, go through each one of them, and if they are not willing to answer them, that’s a red flag. But, you know, if they’re a good employer, if they are somebody who really cares about their technicians, then they are going to sit there and they’re going to really go through and give you good answers, but it also if you’re working in unpaid position, really if you’re going to go for that you need To make sure that you’re going to be able to get the most out of it that you can ask about other things that are going to make up for you not being paid, what are trainings that they pay for, or trainings that they enable you to do? What skill sets? Are they going to help you develop in here? What kind of connections are you going to be able to make, don’t just assume that you’re going to make them don’t just assume that you’ll work a wolf position, and then you’ll magically be part of the wolf world and it’s going to kick off your career, it might not, you might never actually meet any of the biologists you might just be the person in the backwoods doing the tracking and never come in contact with anyone. So ask those questions asked like, you know, who are the biologists that you’re going to be working with and interacting with? What sort of connections can you make Ken? And like ask like, these are some of my goals for working this position? I want to develop ABC and D, could we meet that? Things like that? It really is about protecting yourself? Yes, we do. You want to fight the unpaid positions in this industry. But you know, when it comes down to it, some people are going to end up working them. And sometimes you make that decision for yourself, you have the privilege to be able to work those you know, and you, you have to make sure that you’re protecting yourself, make sure that you’re going to be well treated at this job. And honestly, if it really gets to the point that you have, you are in the job, you’re in the middle of it, you are being treated terribly, it is bad for your mental health. Don’t be afraid to leave that job. Yeah, it really is okay to do. And if it’s if it’s a project that treats its technicians terribly, they don’t have a good reputation in this field. So you will not hurt yourself by leaving that job. So I think it’s really about protecting yourself making sure that you’re pushing your career forward.
Kayla Fratt
Yeah, and I love Yeah, I love some of those red flags that you were bringing up and totally spot on. I just have a lot of questions. And one of the things that I also came to mind, as you were talking was thinking through, I think what is a red flag for me at my career stage may not be as much of a red flag for someone else at a different career stage. So I was just interviewing for a position. And I asked, So what are some of your key performance indicators for this position? Because I was really thinking about it as a high level managerial sort of role really helping to grow and build a team. And they kind of hemmed and hawed for a while. And then we’re like, Well, you know, it’s really, we want to make sure that at least 80% of your hours are billable hours to a specific client. And to me, at this stage, in my career, that was a huge red flag. I was like, what, what are you saying that you’re hiring me to, like build this team and doing this and that and the other thing, and then the only thing that you can come up with as, like, an important measure of success in this role is whether or not I’m always answering emails on time, and whether or not I’m billing enough hours to a specific client, like, tell me more about what you want this dog team to look like. And like, what I would need to be doing in this role, and again, that like, for, like, for, like my last wind farm season where I was, you know, I was, like, I’m showing up and I’m finding dead bats. And that’s what my dog and I are doing. Like, I didn’t even ask about KPIs. I mean, partially, because it was just a relatively self edit moment, it was, you know, show up at the wind farm and get out and do the searches. But if I had asked, and their answer was, hey, we want to make sure 80% of your hours are billed to a specific client, we want to make sure you respond to your emails that would have been like, okay, yeah, very fair, I should be billing close to 100% of my hours to a client. And responding to emails was a thing that I was not great at my first season. So thank you for reminding me that my second season I I can’t just get home and do my data entry and turn off my computer for the night necessarily. So I, yeah, there’s there. There are almost certainly some positions that are like unilaterally for just about anyone would be a bummer. But there’s also a lot of things depending on your career, and what you need and what you want and how you work is so important is going to be red flags for you, but maybe not for someone else. So I think as we’re closing out here, do you have any other tips, you know, just smallish things as far as advocating for yourself and helping move yourself forward in this field. And we’ll also definitely direct people to all of your social media where you have lots of great like the memes, but they’re very helpful memes.
Gael Sanchez
Oh, God, do you think so? One of my biggest things that I honestly always talked about that’s important within our career that people don’t always think about as much is work life balance and having a healthy life outside of work. In this field, we are so passionate about what we do. We absolutely love our jobs. You know, we want to be out there, there’s a reason we work for not as much money and they’re able to somewhat exploit us is because we’re we want to be out there, we want to be doing this job, it is something that a lot of people take as an identity, and it becomes their entire worlds their entire being. And that can be really damaging sometimes. Because if you don’t have this healthy work life balance, if you make this your entire identity, then you, you know, you get burnt out. First off, you can really easily get burnt out because you aren’t willing to set those boundaries, you aren’t willing to say like, Hey, after this time of the day, I don’t answer emails anymore, or Oh, on weekends, I don’t answer texts, or I only, you know, I can’t take anymore. You know, like, you know, if though you wanted to do this interview of me, and I was super, super busy, I have to be able to say, I can’t do this, thank you for this opportunity, really appreciate it. But I need to focus on other things right now. And that’s so important. And you’re able to give yourself more fully to your job when you set those boundaries. And when you have a life outside of your job, you’re able to have friends outside of your job, you know, have your pets that you love, have your other passions, you know, maybe you’re an artist outside of it, maybe you’re somebody who likes to go hiking and have nothing to do with work, maybe you’re somebody who likes to video game, maybe you’re somebody who likes to just do something else that has absolutely nothing to do with your job like watch some reality TV, that is fine, we do not have to be productive in to our jobs on 100% of the day. And that’s so important that is such so so incredibly important. Because then when you come back to your job, you’re actually willing to put your full self into it, you aren’t burned out you aren’t, you aren’t mentally hurting you and also not physically hurting, you know, you have to be able to take your injuries and you know, we get hurt during the field season, we work really hard jobs on our bodies, it’s important to say, I have to step back this week, I’m I’m hurt, I need to let somebody else, you know, do this part of the job, or I need to be in the office this week, or you know, maybe this season I work a job that’s more office based, it’s really important to do that. So that long term, we’re actually able to stay in this position both mentally and physically and able to have that balance. And also, if a job is your full identity, if it goes away for some reason, if maybe you have a season without a job at all, and you have to go work somewhere else and work something outside of the field, or maybe you’re unemployed for a while. Or maybe something happens where you choose to leave the field or you’re forced to leave the field, you lose your entire identity. And it can really hurt you deeply. And if you have other things to fall back on. It won’t be as bad for you. Yes, of course, it’s still going to hurt but you’ll find meaning and other things. And you’ll also just be a better biologist in general, because you aren’t basing you know, when somebody tells you you’re wrong. It’s something at work. It’s not attacking you as an individual. It’s just a disagreement over something scientific or something, you know, in the office or something with, you know, some whatever it has to do with your job and you’re able to actually look at that outside of your identity and yourself and actually take criticism.
Kayla Fratt
Yeah, yeah, no, I mean, that yeah, just so much. Yeah, so many underlyings Yeah, I mean, God when I was when I was fired from WD 40, like I was, I was shattered, I really didn’t know what to do with my life, whether or not I was gonna get back into this field like it. It ruined me emotionally for a very long time. And honestly, one of the things that got me through was I decided, I almost decided not to adopt niffler because I was like, Well, I guess if I’m leaving this field, I don’t need this HYDrive puppy, you know, I don’t need to bring this puppy home. And I decided to take them home anyway. And, like, I spent two months being fully unemployed, where I could not get a job and raising a puppy kept me sane and like, gave me stuff to work on. And like, gosh, I hope people never have to go through what I went through where you’re being fired totally out of the blue and I had 1,000% wrapped my entire everything around this job. You know, I had to take foster dogs home like I when I got fired that afternoon. I had to deliver one of the dogs that I lived with back and like lose that so it’s it’s so all encompassing, and I think it’s so important to Yeah, have have other hobbies. I watched so much bridgerton This summer, like sat down with a Mike’s Hard Lemonade, rubs niffler his belly and watch bridgerton and just felt like a trash white lady for a couple hours.
Gael Sanchez
Yeah, yeah. Like to be able to just sit back and be like, I’m not thinking of work right now. Yeah, like, that is good for you. Where to just be like, I’m gonna go on a hike and I’m not gonna care about identifying any birds this time. I’m not going to look at an invasive species. I’m just going to like breathe in the forest air.
Kayla Fratt
What a lovely note to end on and well Gael, where can people find you online? Where would you like to be found on the internet if they want to learn more and see see some of your your great tips and everything online?
Gael Sanchez
Yeah, so I’ve got a few different places I’ve got my website, which is cactus Cole creations, and that’s cool as in the they’re a marsupial, based in there in Tasmania and in Australia, and they’re just really cool. So look those guys up but I’m cactus cool creations.com And I’ve got a whole bunch of resources on there. I’ve got a Guide to Becoming wildlife biologists totally free. Just you know, a lot of interview questions red flags, I want to give people those opportunities as well as on Instagram at Cactus Cole creations cascata Twitter that’s cactus Cole but pretty much from any one of those you can find the others so yeah, that’s that’s pretty much where you can find me and feel free you know, I love you know, people asking me questions. We do an Ask a biologist Monday every week. It’s really fun. So come and take part in that. But I’m always open to people reaching out and asking more questions if you guys have questions about the field and how to get into it or, you know, jobs. So,
Kayla Fratt
Yeah, I know. And I hope some people do have some questions because again, our listenership right now skews pretty heavily into the dark world, and people who may or may not have as much experience, and that’s one of the things I do suggest to listeners, if they’re like, Hey, I’ve been competing in agility for 10 years, and I’ve got all this dog experience and blah, blah, blah, I say, okay, great. Maybe if you’ve got the ability, let’s try to get you even if it’s volunteering on the weekends with your local, local, local natural history museum or something, but ideally, get you out in teching. That’s going to be one of the things that really helps you figure out whether or not you like this job, because if you don’t like doing this job without a dog, having a dog is not going to fix being tech, because it’s it’s hard. I was just messaging with rogue detection teams. And they’re like, Yeah, we’re swimming through poison oak right now. A project better you than me, like, Oh, I’ll do that eventually. But like you you guys have. So it’s yeah, anyway. Well, everyone at home, thank you so much for listening and sticking around for the end. Hope you’re feeling inspired to get outside and be a canine conservationist in whatever way suits your passions and your skill set. We’ll be back in your earbuds next week with more, more great tips and discussions and all of that and you can always find everything you need over at k9conservationists.org. Until next time!