How our friends and family can support us in our conservation careers

My whole life, until Lonely Conservationists came along, I felt, well… lonely in my conservation career. I had a friend in high school who said that I couldn’t protect our forests, even if I was lying in front of a bulldozer. My family did not understand why I was so upset when the last Javanese rhino went extinct and I had people in my life wonder why I was so happy to get to design an education program with my local zoo, even though it wasn’t an ongoing job.

Unfortunately, the conservation industry is fraught with messiness. The messiness of emotions, relationships, unclear work arrangements, pay availability, organisation structures and community regulations. As it is not a consumer industry, there are no standardised practices that span from our soils to our oceans, our grasses to our air quality. No unions to join, no traditional path of employment to follow. It’s the wild wild west out there, but I guess that’s the point, we are all fans of the wilderness.

It is important to remember that conservationists take a caring role, despite our roles not being treated as such with extra support resources. Doctors will still see other doctors about their medical issues and therapists have their own support to ensure that they are coping with taking on other people’s traumas as part of the job. Conservationists go through a lot in their caring capacities, from animal carers who may raise rescued wildlife from young infants, getting up to feed them multiple times in the night as their mothers would. Others may experience natural disasters and have to face their study sites or habitats going up in flames, disappearing underwater, or experiencing devastating temperature changes. Even conservationists who don’t work in the field can face extreme bouts of eco-anxiety or grief due to their responsibility in education, policy or negotiations. This grief is exacerbated when you have a high cognisence of how bad our natural world is suffering, and work with individuals who don’t care.

So if you have a friend or family member who is passionate about the environment, keep reading to see how you can help to care for them- and if you are a passionate conservationist, maybe subtly send this article to some people so they can learn how they may be able to look after you.

The power of conversation

When talking to a conservationist, it’s important to be empathetic and kind as you have no idea what mixed emotions may be bubbling away inside of them. I have to apologise to my mum here because I am about to use her as an example for this. A couple of years ago, I was irrationally angry with her for putting a glass jar in the general waste bin because she was too lazy to wash out the remaining vegemite and put the jar into the recycling bin. For context, my mum studied eco-tourism, has a compost bin, volunteered for Trees for Life and is known to care for our environment. I know it was one jar compared to the millions that probably get sent to landfill, but at that moment- that seemingly benign jar in the bin was like a stab through my chest.

Here are the facts: I was working as an educator at that time, in a job where I regularly taught students that glass is a highly recyclable material, but that it also takes 4,000 years to break down if it is not recycled. Sometimes grappling with decomposition numbers like this makes me wonder how anyone can use any material so lightly without stressing about its use and after-life (cue eco-anxiety.) Importantly to me at the time, I was only visiting her in Adelaide because I was going to an environmental conference in my home state, so I was surrounded by environmentalists and experts grappling with these issues. In my head, this jar in the bin situation was like me watching her make an active decision that she was willing to allow this jar to spend 4,000 years on earth and in the same stroke, not support the environmental work or education that I do.

Here are some more facts: My mum is a nice person and was just opting for convenience like we all do on occasion and she didn’t expect that this particular jar could ever be misconstrued as a hate crime. Totally fair.

I think that it’s important for friends and family of conservationists to understand the deep and often scary relationship that we have with everyday tasks and objects. You may be asking us to go shopping at a mall, a seemingly innocent activity, but we may be struck by the overconsumption, waste and human rights issues related to the textile industry. If you’re not thinking about these issues, you may not understand our reactions or responses to seemingly innocent acts of communication. As a result of my work, I am often doing deep dives into the textile industry and so I am at a point where it baffles me that clothing stores for new clothes even exist anymore. Shocked by my own eco-grief last year, I had to turn down an offer to help find my dad some new clothes as I didn’t think visiting second-hand stores was his vibe.

In these situations, it’s challenging to articulate how I feel all the time. For starters, I may be experiencing grief that I don’t expect the other party to relate to. For instance, someone once told me that the world is so big, that there must be enough space to bury everything in landfills if we keep digging holes. I know that this individual wouldn’t feel my pain, and no amount of explaining seemed to impact his thinking or behaviour. I also get self-conscious about the social implications of bucking up against behaviours that are otherwise just very common in our modern society and potentially won’t be that dramatically changed by a few people’s actions. I like to think that the small imperfect actions of many are better than the perfect actions of a few, however, I also acknowledge the inaction of many as a reality. It feels weird to know that someone is changing their behaviour just for me in a single situation and not consistently in their everyday life.

All of this to say, our brains are full of so much information about the ways that the world works, so please give us grace when we are grappling with the small aspects of our lives that mean something big to us.

Remove the pressure

A conservationist’s life is not linear. Jobs can be seasonal, training, internships and study look different for everyone and sometimes individuals (including me) need to try a few things before we settle into our niche. Let’s face it, I had to give up on conservation to find my niche in conservationist conservation and giving up isn’t usually a goal in people’s career plans.

If someone tells you that they are a doctor or a lawyer, you can broadly assume their wage or education regardless of their specialty, but with conservation, it’s just not so neat. I have talked about this in many places before, but telling people that you are an environmentalist is most often not a tidy package that you can present to people when they ask what you do. If you say you are a conservationist (or whatever your specialty is- eg. zoologist, ecologist, environmental engineer), people usually follow up their question with “What the heck is that?” or “Oh cool- what exactly do you do?”

Sometimes your identity can clash with your job. In the past, I have found myself having to divulge more of my life than I’d like to while answering a simple question about what I do. I would tell people I’m a conservationist, only for them to ask me where I worked. The truth is, my work could have been the only aspect of my life that wasn’t in the conservation industry- but that didn’t define how I presented myself to people as so much of my efforts in unpaid work, learning and contributing to the world was conservation driven.

I know so many families get frustrated with their conservationist offspring because they aren’t earning as much as they could in other jobs or they are having to come back home between work seasons. But if you really talk to them about how much they know, care and do- I hope you can be proud of them for their tireless contributions to making our world a better place. They are working on an investment in the future of our natural world, which in a way, is more impressive than just a financial investment. Please bear with them, they will achieve great things for themselves too.

Are they okay?

I once had a breakdown in a leadership retreat because someone asked me if they could do anything to help me in my journey to conserving conservationists. It was four years into running the community and they were the first person to offer me help without me having to ask for it, apply for it, set up a meeting, or initiate the interaction. I think the surprise of being cared for and sitting with the realisation that I had not been cared for in this capacity before this moment really rattled me and I just spent the next couple of hours sobbing.

That was all it took, it just took one compassionate person to empathise with my experience, say that they were there to support me and give me a hug. That was it. I can only wish that other individuals get to experience that support much sooner and much more often.

Conservationists are often, due to the nature of the work, super driven, self-motivated and passionate. Sometimes, others may look at them and think that they have everything sorted out and under control, but even if they have- they might just need someone to be looking out for them and to know and be reminded of that. In my time as a carer, in this conservation capacity and in other personal capacities, people have said to me that if I am so good at caring, I should do it more by taking on other responsibilities. Instead, I wish that they would have recognised that I need caring for too. Caring for the carer is important -hence the premise for this entire website.

Care homework

Think of a passionate environmentalist in your life, and give them a little nice caring surprise- whether that be an appreciative message or a little treat. You will be rewarded with a little flutter of good feelings in return and the notion that you may have made someone’s day. It will be worth it, trust me!