RANGER146'S HOME PAGE - Life as a Seasonal Wildlife Biologist

My Life as a Seasonal Wildlife Biologist

CLICK ON THE JPEGS TO View A LARGER PHOTOGRAPH

Canada Goose nest
Cabarrus County, North Carolina

I started off my career at Louisiana Tech University in Ruston, LA by majoring in Wildlife Consevation. By doing so, I condemned myself to moving twenty seven times in seven years and making an average of $10,000.00 per year. That's with few or no benefits. Prior to deciding on my major, I was told by many permanent foresters and biologists in north Louisiana not to major in biology. Simply put, they said I would have a hard time getting a permanent job and would never get rich. Sure it would probably be tough, but just think, being paid to work in the mountains, forests, and prairies all day long studying nature. That's got to be the greatest job in the world!!
Ever since I was a kid in elementary school, all I ever wanted to do was work outside as a naturalist, ranger, forester, etc. I hated large cities, loved to be outside, hunting, fishing, camping, and backpacking. Typical responses of most of classmates in Biological Sciences at LA Tech. So on registration day, I signed on the dotted line next to MAJOR, "WILDLIFE CONSERVATION".
On May 24, 1991, I graduated from Louisiana Tech with a B.S. in Wildife Conservation. The next day I was heading to Jamestown, North Dakota to work for the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service at Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center studying prairie nesting songbirds. I made the trip in 2 days and arrived at the research center wired on Mountain Dew. After a week of training, my coworkers and I were off to our Morris, Minnesota field station to get paid to work outside all day in the prairies and study nature. This is when I knew I made the right career choice.
Thanks to my career choice, I was able to live my dream. To travel many times across the United States and Canada studying Nothern Spotted Owls in WA, identifying plants throughout the southern U.S., and identifying and collecting data on songbirds on the Pacific, Mississippi, and Atlantic Flyways, etc. Spending the spring and summer working in wildlife biology made the many winter off seasons as a line cook or retail sales associate bearable.
Now, I should say, all those biologists and foresters that told me I would never get rich and would have a hard time getting a permanent job were right. I did not get rich, but I was getting pretty far in to debt and after about the fourth year I started yearning for that elusive permanent job. Each season, I acquired a little more experience, but it seemed it was never quite enough to beat the competition for that permanent job, despite many excellent references. By year number six, I had had enough of moving all the time and called it quits and changed careers. However, after a year in retail and restaurants, I was back into wildlife till the end.
In January 1997, I was getting desperate. I was almost 30 years old, I was still seasonal, and the previous year I made around $8,000.00, before taxes. All the moving and winter seasons were wearing me down. Outside of working at ski resorts on Mt. Hood, Oregon, it was hard to get a high paying winter job when you have 15 plus jobs on your application. I always got those same questions when applying for that minimum wage job each winter. Why have you had so many jobs, "Can't you hold down a job?". I would explain that jobs in the wildlife biology field only lasted about 3 to 6 months. After that, we all are unemployed till the next spring. I always loved those "How much do you want to get paid questions." Let's see, during the summer, I made $1,300.00/month plus a house and a 4X4 truck. This is retail, I think to myself, you need this job to pay rent and eat. So, I would say around $7.00/hour. Sometimes I got $7.00 and other times it was minimum wage.
About mid January 1997, I found myself packing my truck in Charlotte, NC and moving to central Mississippi for a three month job identifying plants and running small mammal trap lines. Next, it was headed back to central North Dakota to survey prairie nesting songbirds for the U.S. Geological Survey. In August, I finally made it to Alaska. Alaska was always the one state I yearned to live and work in. This time I was working for a consulting firm as a Marine Fisheries Observer onboard commercial fishing vessels out of Dutch Harbor, Alaska. At least so I assumed, one week prior to graduating from Observer Training in Anchorage, I was hit by a car while riding my bike. Despite those wonderful little pills the doctor gave me to kill the pain in my leg, walking was difficult at best and I didn't want to be on a rocking ship in the Bering Sea not being able to walk, so I reluctantly resigned and flew back to Seattle. The night of the crash, I was offered 3 interviews for 4 permanent jobs with Florida Game & Freshwater Fish Commission and of course, they would not do a telephone interview like most biology organizations. So, I thought this was another good reason not to go out to sea. Also, the "Survival at Sea" videos we had to watch during training caused me to wonder if I really wanted to live on a Longliner for 2 months in the Bering Sea. I don't know if it was the burning Catcher/Processor ship or the scene of the crab boat being tossed around in 30 foot seas on one engine, then suddenly capsizing into water that can kill you in 10 minutes. Maybe there was some power telling be not to go to sea. By the way everyone on the Catcher/Processor lived. The only person that died was a fireman trying to put out the flames. A friend told me, "James, maybe Alaska just doesn't like you". Maybe so. Even though I was only in Alaska for 1 1/2 months, I managed to see a good portion of the Kenai Penninsula and check 4 birds off my birding life list. Also, one of my roomates caught a 200 pound halibut and the other roommate smoked a some salmon and shot a moose, so we all got to have plenty of wonderful seafood and moose burgers for a month.
After spending the next 7 months in Charlotte, NC working in retail, I was off to Jockey's Ridge State Park located on the beautiful North Carolina Outer Banks in the town of Nags Head. One of the requrements of this Park Ranger position was that I had to pass Basic Law Enforcement Training (BLET). I assumed BLET wouldn't be any problem to pass, besides, I had occasionally thought about becoming a Game Warder and training to be a Game Warden is usually longer than law enforcement training. So, in August of 1998, the State of North Carolina enrolled me in BLET.

The classroom part of Basic Law Enforcement Training was pretty easy and very interesting. The physical training sections, on the other hand, were extremely grueling. In BLET, as with military basic training, the instructors just love to have their students do push ups, crab walks, bear walks, and run, run, run. Now I can walk all day long with out stopping, but running is different. I consider running as extremely painful and exhausting. There were many times during PT that I seriously considered quitting and resigning from my job. But, I stuck with it, did the best I possibly could despite the long hours and stress, and I passed Basic Law Enforcement Training with an "A" average and passed the State Law Enfocement Examination with a "B". So finally after 3.5 months I was able to return back to Jockey's Ridge and do my normal Park Rangering duties.
Working as a Park Ranger for the North Carolina Division of Parks and Recreation was one of the best jobs of my life. I was given many responsibilities and completed them with no problem. However, I was starting to miss being out in the forests and swamps identifying birds and plants for scientific studies and moving around the country and seeing new sites. Have you ever heard the term, "You don't know what you have till it's gone?"
Well, I had the best possible life when I was working in wildlife biology. Sure the winter off seasons are tough, but each spring and summer you get to work in the forests, deserts, swamps, and prairies all day long collecting data on plant and wildlife populations. The reason I pursued a permanent career as a Park Ranger was for job security, benefits and high pay, and my family really wanted me to get a permanent job in North Carolina or some place close to Charlotte, NC even if it was a job in retail or restaurants.
In March of 1999, I accepted a high paying seasonal botanist job in Georgia and resigned from my position at Jockey's Ridge State Park. I moved down to Fort Stewart, Georgia in mid April, found an excellent deal on a 3 bedroom house surrounded by massive live oak and southern magnolia trees drenched with Spanish moss.

May 08, 1999:
Just finished my second week at Fort Stewart. I think this will be my best botany position ever!! Fort Stewart has tons of wildlife and plant species throughout the installation. I've seen northern parulas, Mississippi kites, yellow-billed cuckoos, hairy, downy, pileated, red-cockaded, and red-headed woodpeckers, and turkey and black vultures. Other bird species include eastern kingbirds, loggerhead shrike, great crested flycatcher, wild turkey, white-eyed vireo, prothonotary warbler, yellow-thoated warbler, hooded warbler, pine warbler, etc., etc.

The plant life is extremely diverse including a variety of habitats. So far we have sampled plots in sand hill communities, wetlands, bottomlands, upland pine forests, and mixed pine forests. Notable plants include pitcher plants, sundew plants, longleaf, slash, and loblolly pine, a variety of oaks and hickories, numerous blueberry plants, and what seems like a hundred species of grasses, sedges, and rushes. These plants are only the tip of the iceberg. At work it sounds like we are speaking a different language as we are calling out plants for the person recording data. VIRO3, herb layer, cover class 3; PAIN6, herb layer, cover class 1, PIPA2, overstory, cover class 4.

VIRO3 is Vitis rotundifolia (muscadine grape), PAIN6 is Passiflora incarnata (maypop), and PIPA2 is Pinus palustris (longleaf pine).

Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnake

In the last 2 weeks I've nearly stepped on one large eastern diamondback rattlesnake and one small eastern cottonmouth. Our Site Botanist said he hadn't seen very many poisonous snakes until I started working. Well at least I'll get some good photographs of snakes for the web page. I have also photographed a number of songbird nests that we have found on our plots. While sampling one plot last week, we saw many American alligator paths and heard baby American alligators calling for mother. Luckily, Mother Gator did not make an appearance while we were sampling. So far I've seen at least 5 gators here at Fort Stewart, so this summer I anticipate uploading some American alligator JPEGs on this page. One thing that I am finding hard to get used to while working is all the noise from tanks, machine gun fire, jets, helicopters, etc. We all really hope that the artillery personnel are really good shots and that we won't hear a shell dropping near us in the woods. Some of the other staff have told us about the live bombs and grenades they have found out in the woods or in the impact zones. I think its time to renew my health insurance!!

In early July, I was offered a permanent job with HDR Engineering, Inc., working as an Environmental Scientist at their Charlotte, North Carolina office. Finally, after 8 long years as a seasonal Wildlife Technician travelling well over 20,000 miles in pursuit of biology jobs, I could finally settle down!!!

My job entails a variety of work depending on which client we are working for. Examples of work includes: performing wetland delineations, fisheries and aquatic macro-invertebrate surveys, testing water for pollutant levels, watershed surveys, and restoration projects for streams and wetlands. Other duties include wetland creation, mitigation, and monitoring, endangered species surveys, and a lot of report writing. Any type of work I (we) do, involves writing reports on the data and/or our recommendations for the project. Two types of major reports that we do include Environmental Assessments and Environmental Impact Statements.

The amount of time I spend working in the field depends on the size of the project. For example, when working on my watershed management study, I spent about a month in the field collecting data on point and nonpoint pollution sources, locations of invasive aquatic plants, fisheries and aquatic invertebrate surveys, surveying by foot and boat the entire shoreline of the client's drinking water reservoir and walking the length of four creeks that supply water to the reservoir.

Other projects only involve a couple of days in the field such as an endangered species survey I conducted for a fiber optics company that was planning to install a cable in southern Pennsylvania. This project involved walking 2 miles along a road checking to make sure that the endangerd Alleghany wood rat (Neotoma magister) or its potential habitat was not located in the project corridor.

I believe that the best chance for a permanent biology job is to obtain a position with a civil engineering firm or a consulting firm. In my experience, I have found that most of these firms only advertise job openings on their company web site or in national and local newspapers. Although, many engineering firms do advertise biology job openings on the Society of Wetland Scientists web page and some of the engineering web sites, which I have linked on Ranger 146's Home Page.

Best of Luck to all of you!!

The Adventure continues....