hey, I saw you saying you have done field work with tagging and what not. I’m hoping to get into that same line of work. At the moment im planning to go to school for it but I was wondering how you got into those positions and if they were purely seasonal or if some were permanent positions
Hi! I'll do my best to answer this question without writing a novel.🤞
For some context, the tagging I've been involved with was mostly in the context of assisting/chaperoning visiting researchers to the wildlife refuge I worked at! I functioned essentially as a biotech/assistant to researchers who got funding and a permit to come work on the refuge - partially to help them actually work through their ambitious permit, and partially because as a visitor, they're very unfamiliar with the refuge itself! I was a set of hands to do work, & also a boat operator/outdoor guide/safety check/permit compliance watchdog throughout their project. I did a lot of biological work that was just in service of FWS, too, but the visiting researchers generally have the more exciting and crazy projects (because they are getting funded privately, and not through the very sad federal FWS budget). This was all seasonal.
Specifically for the government (but also with private conservation organizations), it's usually pretty damn hard to get a permanent position. You usually have to do years of temporary & seasonal work before you're in the running for something stable! Some temporary contracts are set up so they can be perpetually "renewed," and can end up being semi-permanent, but that kind of job is usually pretty vulnerable to changes in funding - it might not be "renewable" forever. There's also just the fact that a lot of jobs are seasonal because of, you guessed it, seasons! It might not make sense to do certain work in the "off-season," and so it's unlikely to be steady year-round.
However - this is not to say these positions don't exist! They absolutely do, especially in higher education, & for really seasoned field workers. The accepted "track" for this kind of work is usually that you work a bunch of seasonal field jobs & volunteering while you are a bright young maniac, and settle into more permanent jobs as you get older - and maybe you spend a little less time in the field. To be candid, though, everyone's path looks different! There's really no one size fits all.
