Why Federal Wetland Regulations Still Don't Work - 40 Years After CWA

40 years ago, the Clean Water Act was passed, requiring the cleanup of the nation's interstate waters to a "fishable, drinkable, swimmable" standard by 1984.   It's nearly 2013, and despite billions of dollars invested in regulatory programs headed by the EPA, US Army Corps of Engineers, and environmental agencies in several states, we are still losing wetlands.  Even when those lost wetlands are replaced with new ones, the new ones almost always fail to reproduce the natural functions of the lost wetlands.   For 20 years, American presidents and their EPA Directors have been talking about "no net loss" of wetlands.   So let's look at the baseline for "no net loss."

Wow.  So "no net loss" really means "We are accepting that we'll never get back the 30-90% of wetland acreage and functions that we already lost."   From a conservation perspective, that is pathetic.   Now let's look at what our esteemed wetland regulators are actually doing to preserve the functions and acreage of the remaining 10-70% of wetland acreage in the United States.

The Army Corps of Engineers, charged with protecting wetlands and streams with interstate connections, approves over 80% of all impact requests (filling, draining, dredging), and the agency has historically bragged to developers and Congress that they approve over 99% of completed applications for such impacts (many permit applications come with sketchy information and inadequate documentation, and are not deemed "complete").

So what about the "replacement" or mitigation, for these impacts, which is critical to achieve the elusive "no net loss" of wetland and stream acreage?  One study found that permittees routinely recreate less than 50% of the required acreage.  To say nothing of the "functional replacement" of the wetlands approved for filling/draining.   In a similar study in Colorado, over 50% of designed mitigation wetlands were constructed smaller than promised.   Other studies have shown that while "some" mitigation wetlands achieve the required acreage, none of them achieve the functional requirements and needs stipulated by scientists and regulatory agencies. 

In fact, in 2005, the US Governmental Accounting Agency issued a report whose actual title was - I kid you not - "Corps of Engineers Does Not Have an Effective Oversight Approach to Ensure that Compensatory Mitigation is Occurring."  Ouch!  I mean - that's just the title!!!!  It goes into 47 pages of detail on the topic.
I've been in meetings with Corps managers since that report, and those staff have basically said, "This surprised us - we'll get right to it!"

But it shouldn't have surprised them.  Witness the 1988 GAO Report, entitled, "The Corps of Engineers' Administration of the Section 404 Program." From the report:

"Undetected (wetland and stream) violations of permit requirements may be occurring.  Also, some suspected unauthorized activities reported to the Corps may not be investigated for months after they are reported, and many projects are not inspected by the Corps for compliance with permit conditions."

Hmm.  So....how the Corps was surprised in 2005, when they (and Congress) were informed of the same issues in 1988 is a little beyond me.  How in the world can these federal agencies be claiming "no net loss of wetlands" with straight faces, as they are consistently documented as not having even laid eyes on wetland impact and replacement/mitigation projects?  Certainly is a mystery to me.

Then we can head back to 2004, when the GAO issued a report to Congress entitled, "Corps of Engineers Needs to Evaluate its District Office Practices."  The main theme?  Even though every office of the Corps of Engineers follows the same federal laws and standards, there is little to no consistency across the country of what, and how, and why the Corps of Engineers might enforce.  This inconsistency and failure to follow official federal protocol has led to 15 years of crushing defeats in the US Supreme Court (and DC Federal Court, whose rulings impact Corps Headquarters, and thus, all Corps offices) that have drastically undercut the federal government's ability to regulate interstate waters and wetlands.  That's right, incompetence did that.

And there's more:

GAO 2005: "Army Corps Needs to Better Support its Decisions"

GAO 1993: "Scope of 404 Program Remains Uncertain"  (22 years after passage of Clean Water Act)

The sad fact is that when a federal wetland regulator states that "this impact" or "that impact" are not allowed and would not receive a permit, they are generally lying.  The documents linked above, and hundreds of similar documents and court findings, have shown that our federal wetland regulations, and regulators, are not  particularly effective at protecting a whole heck of a lot, particularly once politics, money, constitutionality, and basic professional competence and protocol come into the picture.  

Source: USFS

Is 150 Years of Ecological Research Enough?

For over 100 years, humans have known that the exhaust from fossil fuel burning causes low-altitude air pollution, which makes workers and city dwellers sick.  For 150 years, we've known that cholera and other diseases are carried by water that is untreated and mismanaged. For 1,000 years, we've understood the nature of human-to-human contagions, their propagation in nature, and their utility on the world's battlefields. The use of pesticides goes back at least to the Roman rule of France.  Which has been over for awhile.

These issues continue to pose significant problems for the future of our species, and yet, our inability or unwillingness to tackle them have absolutely nothing to do with a lack of science, or inability to define the problem and the potential solutions.

So, as a natural resource manager, excuse me if I grow tired of hearing that this government agency (career position, with pension) or that university researcher (tenured, with pension) are not ready to proceed with environmental cleanups because there's no guarantee that conventional or existing, innovative restoration techniques may or may not be more effective and efficient than techniques that could perhaps be developed 50 or 100 years from now.   And yet, from some quarters within the highly environmentally aware community, that's exactly the meme that's being pushed from highly comfortable offices.

Obviously, there are fields in which continued - if not accelerated - research and research funding are critical.   Like cancer and genome research.  Those are good ones.

About five years ago, I was invited to do a presentation to a group of EPA scientists on the topic of ecological restoration efficiency.  They seemed pleased enough to listen to what I had to say, but as a group, were extraordinarily concerned with the possibility that, "What if 10 years from now, we find out that we could have been doing it a smarter way, all along?"  Which led to a strong head-nodding agreement that, "We should wait, let's not do anything now."

If you search through ecology blogs, as I occasionally do, there's a wealth of people writing about their research on this wolf, or that lichen, or that endangered fern.   I'd never claim that those are not worthy undertakings for a career in ecology or forest management or whatever.

But I can't imagine that if the Ogallala Aquifer runs dry, as predicted, in 12-20 years, it will matter.  Or that if our human population does in fact hit 12 billion, that it will matter.  Or that if global food production continues to decrease 0.5% annually, that it will matter.  Or that if China and India - fully making up 50% of the entire world's population - decide to go to war, that any of it will matter.

What will matter then is water, soil, and the food that comes from them.  Whether we beat those odds will be greatly impacted by what we do in the next decade to protect headwaters, protect groundwater, enhance food production (but not at the expense of virgin erodible soils/habitats), protect and enhance sustainable fisheries, and protect and enhance soils.   And by what we "do," I don't mean what we research.  I mean "what work gets accomplished."  Upgrading sewer plants.  Water treatment.  Agricultural targeting (both lands to protect against agriculture, and lands to protect FOR agriculture).  Getting it done.   Yes, we'll find out in 20 years that we can be doing it more efficiently.   That should be a triumph in our process - not the starting point for getting something done.

The only way I could answer those career bureaucrat scientists several years ago was with total honesty.  I told them that if we don't start today, it won't matter.  All those efficiencies we hope to discover in the coming decades will be lost because from 1970 to 2030, we did nothing, while knowing full well that the future of our species depended on sustainable water, soil, and food.   We know so much about the dynamics of water, soil, air, and wildlife.  In some cases, the dynamic nature of systems leads us back to the same point - entropy does, and must, exist.  And as a result, there will be failures.  Aqueducts designed by the Romans failed routinely.    Amsterdam's dike system has been built-and-rebuilt several times over.  Stream restoration projects designed in 1930, 1960, 1990, and 2010 have failed.   But most do not.   And from those efforts that fail, we learn much. 

So what will you do? If you're a researcher, when will you be confident in stating that, "this application of theory to field methods should work, most of the time."  If you're an agency biologist, when will you take the authority given to you by your agency and say, "Go ahead with this project.  It's far better than doing nothing."  Or will you say, once again, "more research is needed."

Passive Conservation - The Big, Invasive Lie

Reed Canary Grass often appears at restored wetland sites
where restoration designers did not plan ahead
for post-restoration management

There's a class of biologists, planners, and engineers who firmly believe that "less is more."  That environmental protection is all about fencing people out, and staying away so nature can work its magic.  That attitude has been expensive if not disastrous to conservation efforts all over the world, particularly in North America and Europe.  Humans' history of introducing invasive plants, animals, and insects from continent-to-continent has so upset  the remnants of primordial (pre-human settlement) food webs that in most habitats, even with some basic one-time restoration, the historic balance cannot be restored.   If a habitat project's goal is to achieve a high-functioning, historic quality site, then in the vast majority of cases, long term maintenance and/or adaptive management will be required.

I had lunch with a young biologist a few weeks ago.  He was excited that his employer was restoring a large wetland on Maryland's eastern shore by filling ("plugging") the old ditches that were dug into the property to allow agriculture, then silviculture (pine plantation) to occur there successfully.   The project is being funded by the NRCS Wetland Reserve Program (WRP), which in the vast majority of cases, requires that the final restored wetland be:

a) primarily forested, and
b) permanently protected from future impacts to the wetland

This all sounds great.  However, when I asked for more details on the "forested wetland" part, this biologist told me the prescribed methodology for the site's restoration:

1. Plug ditches to restore the site's pre-settlement hydrology
2. Cut down pine trees (kind of unnecessary - they'd drown on their own)
3. Hope that high quality wetland trees magically reforest the site

The flooding of the site via ditch plugs will cause the die-off of most of the minimal-quality vegetation on the site.  What will result is mud, dead plants, and "whatever grows first."  In eastern Maryland wetlands, that's Phragmites.  Meet Phragmites.

Provide Wet, Bare Farm Soil.....get Phragmites

Phragmites is flood tolerant and drought tolerant.  Phragmites grows in sand, silt, clay, mud, and in pure mineral gravel.  Phragmites grows in polluted water and in some of the most polluted soils on earth. Phragmites colonies can establish by vegetative clone (from rhizome) or by seed, which can be dispersed by wind, water, or wildlife.

An 80 acre colony of Phragmites lives within one mile of the proposed "forested wetland" restoration site. Once the site is flooded, and denuded of its old upland vegetation, what do you think the chances are that the site will "magically" regrow wetland oaks, baldcypress, atlantic white cedar and other important, primordial wetland forest plants?  If you answered "none," then you'd be correct.   The site will be dominated by native and non-native pioneer plants that can survive the harsh site conditions (wet, no cover).  Some of those pioneer species (Phragmites, Red Maple, Sweetgum) will carry on at the site for 40-60 years, before giving way to something else (hint: not an oak-cypress swamp).

What's the correct answer?  The problem here is that the better the eventual habitat project, the more it will cost, and the the longer it'll have to be maintained.  Some options:

1. Watch initial recruitment of plants for 2 years.  If invasive or "less than optimal" plants colonize the site, treat with herbicides and replant the desired vegetation (wetland trees, in this case). Cost: $1000-2000/acre. Difficult to deliver plants and work across a site that is already flooded. Return annually to mow or spray undesirable, competitive plants and to protect planted trees from hungry critters like deer

2. Plant the site immediately.  Withhold at least 20% of the planting budget for the inevitable death of 10-20% of the planted trees (50-90% if planted by volunteers).  Return annually to mow or spray undesirable, competitive plants and to protect planted trees from hungry critters like deer.  Cost: $500-1000/acre.

3. Do not plant, but aggressively manage for the relatively low number of desirable trees and shrubs that colonize the site by mowing/hogging/spraying undesirable plants.  Cost: $250/acre, annually for 5-7 years.

But what's the cost of failure to do any of these?  First, the direct cost is project failure.  We have to think of who funds these projects, and why - government agencies, non-profit groups, corporations, and private foundations.  All of those groups expect to receive a high-functioning habitat for their restoration dollars.  In most cases, a contract is signed to assure it.

And that leads to a more insidious cost of passive conservation or "Walk-Away Restoration" - that of increased cynicism and decreased confidence in the work of restoration practitioners, from not only the organizations that fund the restoration work, but also the public at large, as well as elected officials.   One such example was a project at the Jackson Lane Preserve in eastern Maryland, where inattentiveness by the restoration project partners caused a neighboring farm to be flooded during the growing season.  The farmer filed litigation against the US Fish and Wildlife Service, who ultimately settled the case out of course.  Those project partners likely spent $20,000 - $40,000 on the crop loss settlement, when they simply could have spent $3,000 on a proper topographic survey.

No one (yet) has been able to explain to me why restoration professionals who depend upon the confidence (and resulting dollars) of willing project funders are willing to shave 20% off of the cost of a project at the risk of total program failure.  We're all professionals.  We're all in this together, and (mostly) for the same reasons.  Now let's take on these projects - and their associated larger habitat programs - like a bunch of grownups, not school children looking to hold onto one extra nickel just to say we "saved" it on the front end of a project that turns out to be a costly embarrassment 15 years later. 

Some Notes for Your Second Career in the Environmental Field

Congratulations.  Congratulations on making through possibly an entire career already, and hopefully having some kind of pension.  Congratulations on going back to school to earn one or more environmental degrees - when no one was forcing you (or helping you, or paying for you) to do so.  Congratulations on finishing that schooling.  I hope I'm just as motivated as you, at that stage of my career.  So let's talk.

Too many second-careerists are doing it all wrong, and it's been seriously bumming me out (some language that both your generation and mine (Gen X) can appreciate).   The colleges have fed you a bit of a lie - and I'm not sure why they did it, because the truth would earn them the same or more tuition dollars from you.    The lie?  That you, a 55-70 year old, can substantively compete in an outdoor, seasonal, off-road career field with an army of career-hungry 22-year olds.   I'm not talking about hiring (that would be age discrimination).  I'm talking about the actual job.  For instance, are you ready to:

1) Knowingly expose yourself, repeatedly, to Lyme Disease, day after day, and be in situations where there's no more bug spray and plenty more ticks?......you just have to go get in the woods and work. You are going to get tick bites.  You'll probably need to get antibiotics for Lyme.  Maybe even annually.

2) Work outdoors through cuts that require stitches, multiple bee stings, and snow/rain/ice downpours?  My edict for more than a decade was that my field crews worked in all conditions except lightning and icy roads. Yes, some people did cry, in fact.  Several of them. It was hard.  It was work.  It had to get done.  If our crew was 3 hours from home, and we'd already worked an 8 hour field day (plus a 2 hour drive that morning), and we had 4 more hours of work to do, NO we are not coming back tomorrow.  We are finishing it tonight.  Call your husbands and wives.  Enjoy the OT pay.  But don't complain.

3) Work outdoors for multiple 12+ hour field days in a row, just to return to a crummy hotel in a crummy town full of crummy restaurants? And by multiple days, I mean "two years."

4) Work in snake and alligator infested areas without proper protection in the interest of "getting the job done?"

5) Swim across a hot, stagnant ditch because to walk around it would take another hour? And then keep working outside in wet clothes that you know are filled with all awful manner of nasty bacteria and fungi?

Those are not atypical work conditions for entry-level employees in the environmental field.  And while I've certainly phrased it as, "Are you cut out for this?", I think the more proper question is, "Isn't there a better use of your talents within the environmental field?"  I've met far too many second careerists in the environmental field who feel an incredible sense of "vertical integrity" - folks who think they are obligated to start at the bottom of the field and put in their work, like the young people.  To them, I say, "I respect that, but you are out of your freaking mind."

Field work for your college class.  Aww - friends and dry shoes!
High five!

Field work in real life: Long, lonely days in tough field conditions.

The environmental field is built upon the backs of young people who can work for cheap and who want to prove that they love the environment and/or their job more than their peers do.   That no challenge is too great.  No working conditions unacceptable.  That any gargantuan task can be completed in any infantesimile (sp?) increment of time.  Not enough daylight?  We'll work under headlamps.  There's ice?  I got crampons.    And of course, I can fly out on Saturday to get an "early start."    I did it.  Many of us did.

It's fun, rewarding, challenging, and occasionally pretty miserable. The highs are pretty nifty but the lows are not to be trifled with, alone in your hotel room, sunburned and frostbitten in the same day, both pairs of boots are sopping wet, still hungry because Applebee's sucks, and the hotel bar is full of drunk townies and a single tap of Busch Light...........with your spouse calling and asking why you didn't tell you boss "No."  And at that moment, your Local on the 8s pops up on your hotel TV, showing tomorrow's high temperature: 23 degrees, winds 25mph, wind chill of 10 degrees. Or, 109 degrees, and 90% humidity. Ah, the open road.

The best part about those entry level ecologists is that their time is billed at a very low rate, they don't take much vacation, they rarely ask for raises, and they never take sick days, except to play hookey or nurse a hangover.  An ecologist with 2 years experience can do about 40% of what an ecologist with 10 years experience can do, and probably bills out at 75% less per hour.   Entry level ecologists don't sit around and theorize and make lofty decisions.  Entry level ecologists are the sharp end of the pencil. And nobody cares if the point breaks.  You just grab a new pencil, or ram the old one into that overpowered sharpener....

Environmental science lab at college - learnin' science, chillin' with friends!
Who said happy hour?!

Real life lab ecologists.  Boss over your shoulder 10 hours per day.

Competing against that machine, in my opinion, is useless and a waste of your time.  Instead, I recommend that you try to jump immediately into lower/mid management.  This is helped, of course, if you worked in management in your prior career - even if it had nothing to do with the environment.

Take business classes.  Make notes of exactly how many staff you trained and supervised over the course of your first career.  Take a night and write down what you learned about people (as a whole)  from supervising them.  Witty anecdotes.  Real lessons.  Ask yourself: Do I possess the strength and the empathy to be a leader in the environmental field? 

There are many people in very high positions in government environmental agencies and enviro-corporate America that have little to no environmental technical/college background.  I'd say that 25% of the "industry's" leadership has little technical training in the field.  Press secretaries who became deputy directors.  Marketing folks who became department heads.  And lawyers, oh the lawyers.   And here's the good part - as someone who's finished your environmental college degree - you've got one up on them.  It's fabulous.   The hard part  is to just physically get in the room when the right people are there to meet you and learn about you - and hopefully remember you for that next big vacancy.  Given your high motivation level to date, I think you can break through the barriers that keep you from that.

In short, don't burn yourself out trying to be an entry-level soldier in the environmental field.  Hopefully, you've learned something about work-life balance by this point in your life, and you'll see that taking your career in that direction would be a serious misstep.  Think about what angles you can play to move more effectively into low or mid-level management - or higher - and let your second career develop from that point.

Good luck!

5 Reasons You Won't Get Hired in the Environmental Science Field

I recently ran across an AOL article entitled "10 Reasons You Didn't Get the Job."  Some of the things on the list are pretty ridiculous, like, "You arrived too early for the interview!" (if you are on the east or west coast, and need to plan on traffic or transit delays, you may, in fact, be 20 minutes early).  Others, like an interviewer's push to get the applicant to discuss salary, are a sad but true reason that a candidate can out themselves as either over - or under- qualified for the position (or totally qualified but with an alarmingly high or low opinion of their own professional value).

There's a whole separate list that's applicable just to the environmental field, and the applicant - especially those just entering the field as recent graduates or second-careerists - should know about these things.   Over the last 15 years, I've hired, supervised, and mentored a few dozen people - almost all of them biologists and engineers.

5. Lack of Self-Motivation.  I don't have to tell you what the job market is like out there.  It's going to get better.  Maybe not easier.  But better.  In any job climate, one of the quickest and easiest ways to knock yourself out of consideration for an environmental position is to be unengaged in the community.  I once asked a really qualified candidate what he'd been doing in the months since he finished his Masters Degree.  He answered, "Uhh, pretty much just chillin'."   I personally called him (long after he found out he didn't get the job) and gave him this same advice - it's that basic and that important.   He ultimately decided to become a science teacher at a local high school instead of becoming a professional ecologist.


I'm not suggesting that you spend 90 hours a week volunteering for environmental organizations. But if you want to be in the environmental field, and you can't find a paying gig (yet), use your free time wisely to at least infer to potential employers that ecology (or soil science, or whatever) are more than just a job and a paycheck for you.  If you truly love it, then spend time in it.  For the record, better answers would have included, "Hiking the A.T. and trying to rediscover my spirituality" or "puttin' some time in at my Mom's farm, you know, little wildlife projects here and there." Or better yet, "I have a small business building wood duck boxes (even if you have only built 2, and sold both to your Dad). Here's my business card -  it's my way of staying active in the field until I find work." 

4.  Don't know the players, don't know the game. Whether you are on the academic or the private consulting ends of ecology and environmental science, it's absolutely critical from the start of your career to know who the major players are, and what the major issues are in your chosen sub-field.   For example, my subfield is wetland restoration.  I would not hire anyone for a paid position that didn't know the meanings and importance of most of these words: "SWANCC" "Rapanos" "Carabell" "CREP" "404".   Furthermore, if the job description I'd posted had any reference to our primary funding sources, I'd expect each applicant to have looked up those websites and know basic acronyms like WRP, NFWF, NAWCA, and SRLF.   I'd expect them to know the names of several of the active, high profile scientists, landscape architects, land managers, and engineers in our state. 


This all may sound trite, but it's important.  There are many different theories about ecological theories and about environmental laws, and those all tend to conflict and inform (and sometimes misinform) each other.  When you walk into a job, you need to know, on a very basic level, who will oppose your work and why.  Who supports it, and why?  


3. Basic technical knowledge.   The job market is tough out there.  We're on the east coast, where jobs are semi-available, but not keeping pace with the staggering number of graduates within environmental college programs (to say nothing of other types of college graduates who happen to have practical environmental experience....or political connections).  Okay, now that I've said all that, PLEASE DO NOT APPLY FOR JOBS IN HIGHLY POPULATED AREAS IF YOU ARE NOT QUALIFIED FOR THE JOBS.  If you've never spent time in a wetland, and want to apply for a wetland permitting job in Idaho?  Go for it, I guess.  Florida, California, or Pennsylvania?  Do not waste your time, or the time of the person reviewing the resume's.

When it comes time for the interview, for the love of God, be prepared.  If it's a primate job, know the difference between old world and new world primates.  A wetland job?  Know the 10 most common wetland plants in the area where the job is located (lists are available for most states). A job with birds? Know the status (endangered vs. common vs. pest) of as many locally present birds as possible.  This type of knowledge, even if only lodged in your short-term memory, serves two purposes:  1) immediately inspires confidence in the interviewer to think, "OK this person can walk in the door and do this job," and 2) fills your interview time with witty banter about orchard orioles, some-story-about-Jane-Goodall, or the last special natural place you visited.  All of those things are better than getting battered by interview questions!  And if you don't know some real stuff about your sub-field, you will probably fail this test.

2.  Outspoken Attitudes about Job-Related Topics.  Do enough homework to know what topics not to discuss.  Do enough practice interviews to be able to soundly defend your ethical and moral values on these topics.  Don't ever lie (you'll hate yourself if you do get the job) - but be prepared to defend yourself in a polite but robust way. The biggest ones, if bungled on your end, that could quickly turn off a potential employer (so much so that they might immediately end the interview):
a. The role, importance, failings, and hazards of environmental regulations
b. The role of active habitat management vs. landscape preservation (aka "throw away the key")
c. The role of fishing and hunting in conservation and population dynamics
d. Animal rights issues, as they apply to environmental management, animal testing in research, and everything inbetween.
e. The role of guerrilla activism in environmental science and conservation.

Remember that if you are searching for jobs in a defined geographical area, you're likely to run into your interviewer again at some point.  Wouldn't you hate it if what they remember you for is some off-the-cuff comment you made about "An anarchist takeover of America would be best for biodiversity."  Yikes. 

1. Atrocious Resumes.  Yup.  This is nothing new.  IF YOU ARE 22 YEARS OLD YOU DO NOT NEED A SIX PAGE RESUME'.   Did I make that clear?  Hiring entry-level environmental staff is a crap shoot at best.  No one cares that you had a soils class that one time, or that you totally did the weekend sojourn with the Forestry Club that one time.

Your ONE PAGE RESUME' needs to confine itself to your contact information, education, truly relevant work experience (not Victoria's Secret), and somewhat relevant leadership (not just volunteer) experience (yes: "I organized the Young Alumni Dinner."  no: "I volunteered at the dinner").

Please also:

*Do not misspell anything.
*Do not have a ridiculous email address like, "HotRedhead84"
*Do not list truly demeaning jobs unless it's a story you just *have* to tell, i.e. you started by spraying out port-a-potties at age 17 for minimum wage, and then bought the company three years later, at age 20.

Four Hiring Gimmicks (or Benefits?) in the Environmental Sciences

So, you're looking for an environmental job.  A lot of young (under 40) ecologists and other environmental scientists are pretty displeased with their standing right now.   In many agencies and organizations, the average employee is a 45-55 year old man.  Studies predict that by 2020, the average environmental scientist will be 30-35 and male (though by a shrinking margin).  Doesn't sound like much, but it's a massive shift, and it's one that agencies, universities, and companies expected to occur a decade ago.  

As an entire generation reluctantly retires, experienced scientists (say, age 27 to 45) across the field are doing the work of several employees, and have not been given the opportunities for advancement that their parents were (Director at 36? Gee, that sounds swell!).  Because those scientists are still on "staff" and not middle or upper management, the lack of entry level vacancies has been absolutely astounding.  In a field that desperately needs new blood, there's little to be found.  So far.

When you read those job ads and they list their benefits, they sure sound great, don't they?  Well, if you're new to the field, here's what some of those really mean.  If nothing else, you owe it to yourself to ask questions.

Flexible Work Hours.  Go into any restaurant, especially a fast food restaurant.  They will undoubtedly have a hiring poster on the wall, and on that poster will say, "Flexible Schedule!"  It does not take a rocket scientist (or even an ecologist) to realize that the "flexible" part does not, and was never intended to, benefit the employees of that restaurant.  "Flexible" means they might not put you on the schedule for 10 days.  And then the following week, schedule you for 60 hours.  "Flexible" means working an extra shift, with no notice. "Flexible" does not mean you can call out of work because your baby is sick.  None for you!

In the professional world, it's not nearly as bad.  But you should ask yourself (and your potential employer), "What is flexible?"  Nearly 70% of all companies now have "flex time," a percentage that is increasingly weekly, but in your first week there, you may notice that everyone still gets to the office around 8:00am, because that was the policy for 30 years, up until 2010, when flex time was introduced.  Despite "flex time," other employees may ask each other (or your supervisor) why you come in late every day (despite the fact that you also stay late), or why you "get to" leave early every day (despite the fact that you also arrive at the office early).  And despite flex time, if your boss wants something from you at 9:05am, and your hours are 9:15-5:45; or she wants something from you at 5:05pm, and your hours are 7:30am - 4:00pm, you are sure going to hear about it.  


Tip: ask how many of the employees take advantage of the flex time policy.  Ask when the office is "mostly full" on monday mornings and "mostly empty" on friday afternoons.  That should give you an idea of what the expected hours might truly be.  Flexible work hours can be a huge benefit to you - and data shows that worker productivity and retention are improved as a result.

Professional Development.  Depending on the workplace and the nature of the professional development policy itself, well-funded professional development can be a boon or a depressor to employees.  Have an idea of courses you actually want to take, either for your own enrichment or for your career (I differentiate between the two).  Before you accept a job offer, be sure to very, very briefly discuss your list of potential courses you'd like to take.........if they are somewhat applicable to the job.   Most workplaces will now offer professional development, but that could mean anything from trust-building exercises to very serious courses (with exams) that are held 2,000 miles away from home.  You may or may not want either one of those extremes.


Tip: Just give it some thought - what do YOU want? 

Telecommuting.  Yes, 2/3 of American companies already allow exempt, professional-level employees to telecommute.  Yes, by 2020, that fraction is likely to be closer to 9/10 by 2020.   That means less traffic and more laptops.   But we need to back up a second.  Remember that your new supervisor is likely to be between age 40 and 65.  He or she was probably never, ever given an opportunity to telecommute.  He or she was taught how to manage employees that are sitting in an office (or at least physically reporting to the office once a day), not how to manage a bunch of "minds" that may be scattered across the eastern seaboard and logging onto their laptops at 8:00am to start the workday.

That, my friends, means trouble.  It means that in many workplaces, this "benefit" (that you may have formally negotiated) will be trotted out as a "privilege" at inopportune times. Your boss (like two former managers I knew (ironic - both eventually lost their jobs)) may very well be suspicious of your activities on telecommuting days.   If other coworkers do not have this benefit, they will likely talk about it as well. Is it a battle worth fighting?


Tip: Yes, it's worth fighting for.  At the risk of sounding like an old fuddy-duddy, give your supervisor something to chew on, on days that you telecommute.  E-mail them early and often, and be sure to be at your laptop and ready to answer e-mails throughout the day.  Make sure to accomplish some significant body of work during the day, so you have something to bring back to the office with you.  Some folks would rather not fight it, and just give this benefit up, rather than have to defend themselves constantly.  Be prepared to make that decision.  Again, the majority of American companies now allow professional-level employees to work from home at least occasionally (monthly or weekly).   The nation's managers are still trying to figure out how to best manage it (and us). 

Paid Vacation.  All professionals get vacation!  Well, yes.  Almost all of us accrue vacation.  My current workplace (5 employees) encourages us to spend it periodically, so we don't end up taking a paid month off and crippling the office's operations.  That's a good thing.  Yet, in many workplaces, scientists simply never take their vacation time.  Sometimes it's a personal choice - we tend to love our work.  And in some cases, vacation requests may be denied.

But in the majority of cases, we simply don't take vacation because recovering (at work) from "being off" for more than about two days can take weeks (it's referred to as "digging out.").   Also note that if your particular type of work is seasonally dependent, your ability to take paid vacation (until you become a manager) will be limited to periods outside the "busy season."   No matter what, you do not want to be in a workplace that hinders its employees from taking reasonable time off (i.e. at least the paid annual leave or vacation pay that you accrue).

Tip: Ask your interviewer, or any of the employees your interviewer allows you to meet, what percentage of their accrued vacation they get to take per year.  Please do not ask them how many days they earned and how many days they used.  People are sensitive about that!  Your goal is to find out that "average employees earn 3 weeks but only use 1.5" or "they earn 2 weeks and only use 2 days."  That is precious and powerful information!

Ecology Career Paths - a Snapshot

I got my first job as a field technician in 1994.  I did a lot of really important environmental tasks, like trapping feral cats and trimming flowers. Now, I manage million dollar ecosystem restoration projects for a small nonprofit organization.  Instead of explaining how the heck that happened, I thought I'd provide a cross-section for you new grads - a cross-section of myself, and also an amazing bunch of people I worked with at one time, several years ago, at Ducks Unlimited.  Let's see where they came from, and where they ended up (as of 2012). Remember that we were all high school students.  All college students.  Many of us emerged from college to take minimum wage jobs (at the time, $3.25 or $3.50 in some of our cases!).  And by most measures, we have all had successful careers....so far.

Me:
1997: BS, Forestry and Wildlife, Va Tech
1999: MA, Env. Planning, App State U.
1998-2000:  Env. consultant - environmental inventories
2001-2005:  Env. consultant - environmental restoration / mitigation
2005-2009:  Restoration Ecologist, Ducks Unlimited
2009-2012:  Restoration manager, small non-profits

Chris
1992: BS, Wildlife, Penn State
1992-1997: Restoration Technician, local land conservancy
1998-2000: Biologist, consulting firm
2000-2007: Restoration Ecologist, Ducks Unlimited
2007-present: Owner/chief biologist, habitat management company

Scott
1996: AA, Biology.  2008: BS, Wildlife, Penn State
1996-2002: Field technician, local soil conservation district
2002-2009: Restoration Ecologist, Ducks Unlimited
2009-present: Regional Asst. State Conservationist, USDA-NRCS

Spencer
1992: BS, Agriculture. U of Delaware
1992-1998: various field jobs
1998-2005: Restoration Ecologist, Ducks Unlimited
2005-present: Owner/chief biologist, habitat management company


Brian
1995: BS, Biology, SUNY
1997: MS, Fisheries, UVM
1998-2005: fisheries biologist, state of Maine
2005-2008: Restoration Ecologist, Ducks Unlimited
2008-present: Fisheries manager, NOAA lab


Rachel
2004: BS, Env. Science, U of Miami.  
2006: MA, Env. Policy, American U.
2006-2007: Wetland Intern, Ducks Unlimited
2007-2009: Lobbyist, Ducks Unlimited
2009-2011: Lobbyist, regional conservation organization
2012: Lobbyist, National Wildlife Federation


Kathi:
2005: BS, Biology, Penn State
2007: MS, Marine Ecology, UCSD
2007-2008: Wetland Intern, Ducks Unlimited
2008-present: PhD student, Virginia Tech


Nate:
2006: BS, Wildlife, Penn State
2006-2008: Field tech jobs, nationwide
2008-2009: Wetland Intern, Ducks Unlimited
2009-2011: field tech jobs, nationwide
2011-present: env. consultant - endangered species/forest/wetland inventories


Jay:
1994: BS, Wildlife, WVU
1994-1999: technician, local soil conservation district
1999-2008: engineer, local soil conservation district
2008-2012: restoration engineering manager, Ducks Unlimited


Kurt:
2002: BS, Env. Engineering, Penn State
2002-2005: Consulting civil/environmental site engineer
2005-2007: Restoration engineer, Ducks Unlimited
2008-2012: Regional conservation manager, Ducks Unlimited

For Scientists, is Competence Still More Important than Confidence? (Part I)

So there you are, sitting in a staff meeting.  That new project just got approved.  The one you've been waiting for - the one for which you're more qualified than anyone else on the entire staff.  It's your turn to shine, and you've put in your dues - patiently, quietly.

And you watch it get handed off to two other staffers in the blink of an eye.  What the heck?  She's never trapped a salamander.  He's never handled wildlife for work at all.  You wrote your thesis on this exact species, in the exact county in which the project is located!  How did this happen?   You go home and the wheels start spinning.  They don't appreciate me.  They don't think I'm competent to do the work.  I don't belong there.  They don't respect me.

40 years ago, successful careers in ecology (then referred to as "wildlife management" and "forestry") were largely defined by time afield, critical technical knowledge, and the number of years served working on a habitat, in a region, or focused on a single species. Ecologists worked out of tents, out of field stations, out of laboratories and out of trucks.   Few or no staff meetings, congressional briefings, client and donor site tours.  It was an awesome time to be a biologist, or so they tell me.  Ecologists (and our ilk) were expected to put their heads down and to keep working - never fear - the money will keep coming.  The career field was full of introverts, as it still is today (anywhere from 65-80%), ecologists are still expected to be as competent (or moreso) than our predecessors in prior decades, and government agencies still play a huge role in the field of ecology (especially ecological restoration: my field of choice), but somehow, nothing else is the same.  What happened?

Two big things happened.  One was increased budget accountability that initially arose out of contentious legislative debates in the 1970s - some key moments when somebody said, "We are spending how many millions of dollars to protect what type of corpse-eating bird?"  Such questions were historically not asked, at least, not in public detail, of natural resource agencies. Blame the JFK investigation or the Carter-era Farm Bill revelations.  Suddenly, an era began that included phrases like, "Get me the director of that agency.  Tell him he'll testify tomorrow morning at 6:00am."

The second thing that happened is the continued growth of the information age. Through simple web searches, forwarded emails (that may contain errors), and FOIA requests, much of today's conservation work, from emails to old data to formal publications,   is easily accessible to the public. They can (and do) have questions.  Hard questions.  And today's ecologist has to be able to answer those questions, quickly, and often in a pretty unfair environment.

Some will argue, as the writer of Women in Wetlands routinely does, that this is totally unfair to scientists, who in the vast majority of our cases, do not possess the political and conversational aptitude to handle these situations, the run-up of events prior to these awkward moments, or possess even a small fraction of the confidence to deal with the results of such a conflict and move on quickly.  

While I partially agree that it's "unfair," perhaps I've been working in the field long enough (18 years) that I just don't care anymore.   I've politically bought into the theory that "If you are spending government money, dammit, you better be able to explain how you are spending government money."  Again, many scientists bristle at this because "it didn't use to be this way."  Again, I guess that I just don't care.    If you're not confident about your work as an ecologist or environmental scientist, then you'll eventually have to move over - perhaps for someone less competent but more confident than you are.  And in this era of Tea Parties and Congressional inquiries, I could argue that a scientist who can explain their work to the public is much more valuable than a similarly competent scientist who refuses to present a powerpoint on their work to their agency sponsor.

I'll write a lot more on this topic soon.  The debate isn't going away soon, that's for sure.

Pardon the Mess

Gotta crack a few subway cars to make a reef.
Isn't that how the old saying goes?

This is a little undertaking.  The format is a mess.  The links are non-existent.  It'll get there.

Bear with me.

Come back soon :)