Recruiting People With Fire in Their Eye for Conservation

At a meeting this week, I heard the statement "how do we find people with fire in their eye for conservation?" The discussion was about finding and selecting the next generation of conservation employees.

When I was an undergraduate student, it seemed like there were few jobs for the many folks who wanted a career in fish, forest, or wildlife management. I worked in a gas station near campus and I put gas into the cars of my fellow students as they also worked at other jobs, teaching, selling cars, other career fields. I was persistent, stayed in school, and found opportunities. Some of the other folks also found jobs in conservation.

On the way to Columbia to another meeting this week I saw a billboard for, I believe the Marines, that said something like "We don't take applications, we take commitment." The Fish and Wildlife Service Web page about careers also has the word commitment in the first sentence of their information, where it says "Working for the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service is more than a career. It is also a commitment..." A common theme in the personal descriptions of what several Forest Service employees do each day is their opportunity to make a difference and they often comment they enjoy their jobs.

Jim Keefe, in the video "The Spirit of Conservation" comments that Department employees did not feel they were working just a job, "it was a crusade."

I think as we keep telling people, including young people still in school, about our job opportunities, our future vision of what conservation is about, and the values we believe in, that we'll continue to find the right folks with fire in their eyes for conservation.

Here is another helpful hint: future leaders in conservation will need to be excellent managers as well as biologists, and learning about the criteria for performance excellence used in the Missouri Quality Award and the National Malcolm Baldrige Award is a good start.