Environmental Careers

This isnt exactly conspiracy, but suited for Fragile Earth, since we are here to help make a difference in the environment and our planet.

Anyone in here in an environmental related field or pursuing one, lets hear your experiences!

32 years working for a government land management agency. Now semi-retired.

I loved it until I started climbing the ladder. Then you get chained to a desk and spend your day fighting political battles.

[edit on 27-6-2007 by dave_54]

can you describe your job in the field? i am starting an environmental studies degree at university and would love to hear some stories from the field.

I am also getting my BA in environmental science and have spent 4 years in the Forest Service. What kind of stories do you want to hear. I do not have that many years but some good stories.

Originally posted by paigcal
I am also getting my BA in environmental science and have spent 4 years in the Forest Service. What kind of stories do you want to hear. I do not have that many years but some good stories.

describe the work you did, did you enjoy it? things like that.

I did a variety of things, but mostly I was on the trail crew. We lived in the woods for months at a time building trails in the middle of no where. We also rebuilt and fixed up old cabins that have been in the back woods since the early 1900's. Old survivor cabins, which were pretty small, we added some nice old fasioned stoves. I loved it. They also made us help out with some wildfires. In the winter I worked timber sale. Marking trees they were going to sell. I worked on the tree rehabilatation farm. I had to pick pinecones off every single tree in the farm. There were quite a few. There was a bunch of odd jobs they gave us to keep us busy. I learned a lot of skills. Great job if you don't mind working for the government, the Forest Service seems to be losing it's funding. I don't know how long it will be around.

I was in Fire most of my career. Crisscrossing the U.S. every summer from fire to fire to fire. Many a morning I awoke in my sleeping bag and could not remember what state I was in. I kept a small pocket sized journal and I would have to check the previous day's entry to remember whether I was in Idaho or Utah. The calendar function on my watch told me the date and day, memory wouldn't do it. Long hours, physically arduous, dangerous and dirty work. Pay was pretty good, but you earn every penny the hard way.

It's a young single person's game. After a while it takes a real toll on your body and your family life. Fun and exciting while real young. As I got older it was less and less enticing, and finally my body and my wife(and the funerals of a couple of friends) told me it was time to quit. I took a promotion to a non-fire job in the planning side of things and the gov sent me back to grad school. Spent the rest of my career there, working on everything from the environmental planning of timber sales to modeling the effects of new subdivisions on watersheds to estimating the effects of a planned new campground on wildlife. Varied and interesting, and better working conditions. When I was eligible to retire I stuck around a few months but then decided it was time to call it a career. And I moved on...

[edit on 28-6-2007 by dave_54]

I used to work as a chemist and did some work in environmental laboroatories. The environmental industry does little to really protect the environment. It is more about creating bureacracies which can live off of tax and/or coroporate dollars than actually going out and cleaning up the environment, so prepare to get jaded.

If you are going to work in the environmental field, you should expect to do a lot of meaningless paperwork. Since the environmental industry is highly bureacratic in nature, you should expect to work for and with people who are attracted to bureacratic jobs.

You should also not expect to make a lot of money nor receive a lot of praise. People hire environmental consultants and other environmental workers because they have to, not because they want to. This being said, if you work in the environmental field, people will want you to work cheaply and quickly. You will not get any extra accolades for doing a good job.

hotpink, you are righ about that. That is what my trail boss say's. He is lucky and comes to work with us in the field. He often has to sit and do endless paperwork and has have continuos backround checks. (He also works with explosives)so he is constantly getting investigated. I still do not think he would of changed his career. I was lucky and did work with some really great people who do care about the environment, of course there are others, well I won't go there. There are some jobs that I would love to do, but they put your body through hell. I would do trails for the rest of my life. There are good and bad things. I loved not always having to deal with the outside world. It was nice living in the mountains. Peaceful, I miss it.

some interesting replies thats for sure! not the first time i've heard that environmental jobs are the underdogs in the big corporate world.

I am from Canada, i feel that maybe a government job with Environment Canada would be more "green" friendly then say a corporate monster hiring on a couple consultants to sign off the companies wrong-doings.

Originally posted by beerbaron105
some interesting replies thats for sure! not the first time i've heard that environmental jobs are the underdogs in the big corporate world....

As one of my forestry professors said "Forestry as a profession has its rewards. Financial is not one of them."