Welcome to Solvitur Ambulando, which means “Solve It By Walking.” On this journey, we explore the alchemic potency of walking for sorting through life’s puzzles, exploring our world, and transforming ourselves. Like a good walk, you will encounter distinctive ideas, remarkable people and gorgeous scenery. I hope you will take a beautiful walk today. And if you like what you read and hear, please
Welcome to the Walks of Life podcast. Today, I am thrilled to have ornithologist Sophie A. H. Osborn with me. She has worked with endangered birds and other animals all over the US, in Guatemala, in Peru, and in Africa. Her book, Feather Trails, examined her efforts to help save the California condor, peregrine falcon, and Hawaiian crow. I loved interviewing Sophie about that book. Her new book, Wild Work: Adventures of Women Field Biologists, co-edited with Susan B. Adams, shares the personal stories of three dozen women making valiant efforts every day to study and protect animals. I loved this book too, and highly recommend it. You can listen to the podcast or read the transcript below. Thank you, Sophie!
Russell Smith: Sophie, it’s wonderful to talk with you again. Welcome.
Sophie Osborn: I’m so happy to be here. Thank you so much, Russell.
Smith: Let’s get right into your wonderful book. How did you and Susan Adams, your co-editor, come to this idea?
Osborn: The idea actually originated with Susie, my co-editor. She is an aquatic ecologist who spent much of her career studying fish and crayfish.
In 2018, she walked into a bookstore in Jackson, Mississippi, and she was delighted to find that they had a large aquatic section, which is not typical in bookstores. There were books on fishing and boating and aquatic ecology and animals. She was all excited, but as she started perusing the titles, she was dismayed to find that all of the books were by and about men.
That made her think of a family friend, a teenager called Norah, who loved wildlife and streams and biology. And Susie thought to herself, “Who are this young girl’s role models? When she’s looking at these books, where are the books that show her that she too could be a fish biologist?” So Susie left the bookstore with her mind filled with an idea about creating an anthology of field stories by and about women biologists.
I became involved a year later, in 2019. I was living in Montana, I was living in Montana and writing Feather Trails, and I’d accepted a short-term job with the US Forest Service that involved interviewing some of the agency’s researchers about their work. Susie Adams happened to be on my list of people to contact.
She and I had been in graduate school together in the 1990s. She was getting a PhD in fisheries, and I was getting a master’s in birds. But we’d really just been acquaintances, so I wasn’t even sure she’d remember me. So I called her up and tentatively said, “We were in graduate school together. I’m not sure if you’d remember me.” And she responded, “Well I named my daughter Sophie and my favorite bird is the American dipper, which you studied for your master’s degree.” So she did remember me. We had a wonderful time catching up, and she was really interested to learn that I had written a book about my work with the California Condor Recovery Program in Arizona.
That prompted her to tell me the story about going into the bookstore and how she wanted to create an anthology of field stories by and about women. I thought it was a fantastic idea. I said, “You should go for it. It’s a great idea.” We hung up, and that was that, or so I thought.
About a month later, she called me up and said, “Hey, do you want to go in on this with me? Do you want to be my partner in creating this anthology?” I think my enthusiasm had convinced her to go for it, and she thought my experience with writing and publishing would be incredibly helpful in making the book a success.
I was a little trepidatious about saying yes, because I was in the middle of writing my book. But I decided it would be an amazing project to be part of. So I said yes, and we became partners on what turned out to be a very lengthy endeavor. It took us about six years to get this done and published. But it was very rewarding.
Smith: In the preface, you note, “One of our most challenging initial tasks was choosing from among so many wonderful stories.” What was your screening process like? What especially stood out to you and Susan in a story?
Osborn: I think the most essential part was that there was a kernel of a captivating, interesting, sometimes fun, good story.
Most women biologists have very little creative writing experience. We’re scientists. We write technical, academic papers. Some of the writing we received was rough. But we felt like writing was something we could work on and help people with. What we needed, at heart, was a good story.
Any time there was a good story, we accepted it. Some writers submitted two or three stories, and sometimes we took just one or two of them. Some were really interesting origin stories, about how people discovered wildlife biology, but they weren’t really stories about doing work in the wild, and we wanted to show how women are thriving in this work.
Some stories weren’t really field stories, so we were able to exclude those. Some were a bit too similar to excellent ones we’d already accepted. But really, it was hard, because people took time out of their busy lives to write their stories down and trust us with them. It was hard to say no.
Smith: I love that, and I want to follow up on something you just said: most biologists are scientists. They’re not necessarily writers. That’s not necessarily the skill they develop. Tell me about the editing side of this and what that looked like.
Osborn: The editing process was intense because, as I said, some of the writing was rough. People made valiant efforts, but short stories and creative nonfiction are not a biologist’s bailiwick. Each week, Susie and I each read a batch of stories and edited them very intensely, and it almost ended up being a crash course in how to write a creative short story.
We told writers: you want to write a captivating first sentence or two and draw people in. You want to build anticipation in your story and leave readers with an unforgettable ending. We gave them all those instructions. Susie and I each edited a batch every week, and then we had a weekly phone call, for four years, where we meshed our two sets of edits. We had little arguments about comma placement and trying to craft the perfect sentence and how a story should be organized and flow.
Then we sent those comments back to each author. Each time, the author received a slew of comments, revised their story, and sent it back to us, and we did that whole process again and again. We did it at least four times for each story during our editing process, and then at least two more times during the editing process with the publishers.
All together, we spent four years working with these authors, many of whom had just submitted a story and didn’t realize they would be working on it for the next four years. But I think we helped them craft these stories, and we ended up with just a phenomenal collection. We wanted the writers’ voices to really stand out, and I think they do.
They’re all very individual, and you get to know the person in the story, yet the writing is good quality and it doesn’t take away from the story; it enhances it. So hopefully we achieved that.
Smith: I think absolutely. All of their personalities clearly stand out. Their viewpoints clearly stand out. It was excellent.
Osborn: Good. That was the goal, so I feel happy that we managed to achieve that.
Smith: What did you learn from gathering and editing all these stories that you didn’t already know from your own field work? You are a field biologist. What did you learn from doing this project that you didn’t already know?
Osborn: Some of it was learning about different biological fields, and that was really fun for me. I’m a bird biologist. I know what bird biologists do in the field. But I knew very little about aquatic biology and ecology, so I really loved learning how aquatic biologists do snorkel surveys, snorkeling up rivers and streams to count fish; how they dive into big rivers and overturn rocks to find and study crayfish; how they affix tags to freshwater mussels so they can monitor their growth and movements.
It was really fun for me to learn some of the aquatic techniques. I also got to learn how researchers catch wild lizards. I had no idea. And one of the best was learning how biologists monitor sloths at night in the rainforest. The rainforest is an intimidating place sometimes, with all the creatures and snakes and spiders and insects that live there.
But to do sloth work, you have to be doing it at night, often when it’s bucketing rain, with insects flying in your face. So it was fascinating learning about that kind of work.
Smith: I love that too. I loved the diversity of biology fields that were addressed in the stories.
The title says “field biologists,” and I expected some repetition across the stories, but I was surprised by the wide variety of approaches and what it takes to study very different animals. That part was fascinating.
Osborn: Oh, I’m so glad. I love that too. I hadn’t even realized what a diversity of work there is out there, and it was wonderful to read about. We have bat biologists, we have crayfish biologists. We have a couple of botanists, so we did try to include plants. One insect story, a few marine mammal stories.
We had a hard time getting more marine animal stories and more insect stories. But we really did manage to attract just a wild variety, and it made me really aware of the incredible diversity of work that’s out there, and what a large community of field biologists there is.
It made me feel very proud to be part of this community of amazing women doing incredible work.
Smith: In reading these biographies, many of the authors switched careers or academic tracks to pursue field biology. You yourself studied international relations and French literature in college.
Your sister, Lisa, studied French lit and humanities. Lindsay Gray Carlson mentions a colleague named Hayden who studied economics in college. Andrea Hazelton and Diane Thomas both studied English. What causes this change in people?
Osborn: Some people have a transformative experience in nature that opens their eyes to what’s possible out there, and a different route they can take.
So they change direction and decide to enter this field. But I think what’s more common, and more typical, is that most of us didn’t even know this field existed when we were growing up, and that’s what happened with me. I had never heard of wildlife biology. I had no idea that people could go out and work with wild animals until after college.
I’d always loved animals, but I thought my only option was to become a vet, and as much as I loved animals, I didn’t want to spend my life working indoors in a vet office. I learned about the field by a fluke, when my housemate after college received a catalog in the mail for the School for Field Studies, a group that offers field courses in natural resources all over the world.
I was reading about a wildlife biology course in Kenya, and reading the description, I thought, “My God, this is what I want to be doing.” I didn’t even know it was a possibility. So I ended up taking that course in Kenya, going back and making up some coursework so that I could get into biology, and then I kept going and got my first field job.
My sister had no idea that this field existed either, and she didn’t really appreciate how great it was until she came to visit me in Montana when I was doing my master’s work on a wonderful little aquatic songbird that lives in mountain streams. She had so much fun helping me on my project, and she thought, “This is what I want to be doing, too.”
So a lot of people come to it late, and once they discover it, they just go for it. One thing I’m hoping about this book is that it allows young women to learn earlier that this field exists. Hopefully this is one of the things that will help awaken people to the fact that these wonderful careers exist.
Smith: I think that’s spot on. As I told you while we were setting up this interview, my girls are going to love this book. They will totally love this book. It’s just so fascinating, and it’s such an eye-opening presentation of field biology for anyone, but especially for young girls.
Osborn: I hope so. I think it’s a great book for animal lovers and nature lovers, because often we love animals, but we don’t know that it’s possible to do this kind of work with them.
Smith: You mentioned wanting to work outdoors, or at least not work indoors all the time.
It does seem like an early attunement to, or experience with, the outdoors and wilderness is pretty key for sparking a potential interest in becoming a field biologist. I’m curious: how can parents of young kids, young girls especially, spark that interest in the outdoors?
Osborn: I think that’s exactly right.
I had relatively little experience in wilderness. I had never done much camping. My parents weren’t really outdoor people, but I did live in a rural area. We had horses and farm animals, and we were outside all the time, walking or riding horses. I do think that spending time outdoors, in whatever capacity, is key.
For parents who live in cities or in less rural areas, there’s going to parks, finding nature wherever it occurs, and it does occur in cities and other places. I think bringing kids into nature is so valuable on so many levels. It really shows them how captivating and interesting nature can be, and how many fascinating components there are to look at.
And when parents do take kids into the outdoors, if there are things that interest them, whether it’s trees or rocks or birds, get them a field guide or binoculars, and cultivate that love and care. I was talking to somebody a few days ago who said that his 10-year-old son discovered birds. They gave him a bird book, and he just went bonkers about birds and started seeing them everywhere and studying them.
If parents can take their kids into nature and then encourage a potential interest, I think that’s really key.
Smith: Could you share a story from the book with us, Sophie?
Osborn: Sure. I think that’s one of the hardest questions you could ask me, because, as you said, there are so many varied stories.
Some are funny and lighthearted. Some deal with really challenging events, like a catastrophic flood in Alaska or a helicopter crashing in Colorado. And there are so many creatures too, from fig wasps to humpback whales, crayfish to condors, and everything in between. But I’ll start by mentioning Erin Stahler’s story.
She is a wildlife biologist who works in Yellowstone National Park, so this is a wolf story, and a lot of people really love wolves. The story starts with a team capturing wolves and putting on new radio collars. They’re up in the helicopter, and the team is shooting a tranquilizer dart at a target wolf to immobilize it, to put it to sleep for a while so they can work on it.
Their gunner takes a shot at one wolf and thinks he misses, so they go after a second wolf. He takes a shot at that wolf and it goes down. But they have a spotter plane flying overhead that tells them what’s going on so they don’t miss anything, and the spotter plane says, “Hey, that first wolf went down. It ran into a treed area, but it’s down.” So they need to go and deal with that wolf too.
Normally they land the helicopter right next to the wolf, do what they have to do quickly before the animal wakes up, and then move on. But in this case, the wolf is in the trees, so Erin and her colleague Elise have to hike in a quarter mile to get to it. Unfortunately, they have to go through waist-deep snow. They get out of the helicopter, take a step, and they’re up to their waists in snow. They can barely make forward progress.
Erin thinks about it for a minute. They have backpacks and heavy equipment on, but she gets on her knees and starts crawling. She can actually stay on the surface of the snow if she’s crawling, except every few minutes they tumble through and get snow all in their faces.
They end up crawling a quarter mile toward this wolf. That takes time, and as she’s crawling along, she thinks, “Okay, there are three possible scenarios here. Either the wolf has woken up and left the area, or the wolf is still knocked out, in which case we’ll be able to put on our radio collar and do our work. Or maybe it’s in between, coming awake but not completely awake, in which case . . . I’ll tackle it.”
So those are the three scenarios she anticipates. She crawls along, and as she’s starting to approach, she sees the wolf sitting up. She draws a second dose of her immobilization drug, just in case, and continues to move toward the wolf.
She gets to him. He turns around, sitting up, and just stares at her with these golden eyes, just feet away from her. But Erin is remarkable. She has trapped over 100 wolves and a variety of other animals. She knows exactly what she’s dealing with, what she can do, and what is dangerous for her to do.
She reaches out, and the wolf turns away from her. She puts her hand on its back and gently presses it down into the snow. The second dose wasn’t necessary. The wolf was out of it enough that they ended up processing it, putting on the collar, drawing blood, doing what they needed to do, and then the wolf went off.
I just thought this story was remarkable, because I live in the Rocky Mountain West, where there are a lot of big macho hunters who are terrified of wolves. And here’s this young woman crawling up to a wolf in deep snow. The wolf is sitting up facing her, and she’s so calm and so strong, knows exactly what to do, and just pushes it down and does her work.
So I thought that was a remarkable story.
Smith: It was. I love that story too. That was amazing. And for the record, Sophie, there are zero circumstances in life where my plan B is to tackle a wolf.
Osborn: I know. Exactly. I’m with you on that one. Zero. So I found that very admirable. It’s funny, they say that bravery is not being unafraid of something, but doing your work anyway.
And there are a lot of stories where women are terrified of something, but they do the work, and I think that shows exceptional bravery. In Erin’s case, it was a little different. She’s in charge of all the immobilization, drugging and capturing animals in the park, this young woman.
She knew exactly what she was doing, and she was confident and calm, and she just did it. But to me, it seemed very brave. It seemed crazy.
Smith: I completely agree. Just very brave and very determined. Oh, I love that story, Sophie. Thank you for sharing it.
Osborn: There are so many good ones.
Smith: One of the many reasons I love the book is that the stories don’t shy away from confronting the hard realities of the world. Many authors describe the profound tensions of field biology work, and I want to ask you about some of these.
Let me start with this. My daughter Cordelia and I are reading a book on the space shuttle missions, and one reflection many astronauts make in it is that the experience of seeing Earth from space instilled in them a powerful sense of oneness with the entire Earth and all its peoples. I came away from your book with a similar sense of the storytellers’ unity with nature.
But something else that didn’t come through in the space shuttle stories clearly comes through in Wild Work: a deep sense of, and even more than that, an embodied appreciation of, human fragility amidst the awesome and sometimes terrifying power of nature. Talk with us about those contrasting feelings.
Osborn: It’s great that you bring that up. Our bond with nature and our time out of doors as field biologists do make us very aware of the power of nature and of our intense vulnerability working in it. As field biologists, we often work in miserable conditions: miserable weather, lightning, blizzards, intense heat, hail, freezing cold, and occasionally even dangerous conditions.
We sometimes cope with wild water or unstable terrain or unpredictable situations like floods or quicksand. But even though we sense the power of nature and experience our own vulnerability compared to it, I think it’s equally important that we also come to appreciate that, despite its power, nature is also incredibly fragile.
When we are out in nature, we become aware of how many pressures humanity is inflicting on it, and how easily it can be destroyed. There really is a tension. Nature can be dangerous. We’re quite vulnerable. But on the other hand, nature itself, powerful as it is, is really vulnerable to everything that humanity is doing.
Another important component is that even though nature is at times powerful and at times very fragile, it often becomes the safe space for female wildlife biologists. We go out into nature, and we can put aside the stresses of the world and do our work and recharge, and we feel safe and happy there.
So despite the dangers, we see that fragility in nature. It nurtures us, and I think we would all go to great lengths to try to protect it.
Smith: Love that. There’s also a sense of restlessness in the book, for example, working in far-flung places throughout a career.
You’ve been in Peru, Africa, Guatemala, all over the US. There’s also a sense of seeking and finding home, possibly not where you grew up. Émilie Desjardins and Kira Cassidy, as two examples, both fell in love with Ellesmere Island in the remote Arctic of Canada. How do field biologists experience the search for home and place?
Osborn: That’s a great question. I think part of it is just logistical. One of the reasons we’re often working in so many different places is that field work is often seasonal and short-term. It might be a bird’s breeding season, so we might go to Alaska for the breeding season, but then the birds migrate out of there.
So field biologists often move from one job to another much more frequently than other people. That allows us to experience different geographical regions and habitat types. And sometimes, when we have amazing experiences or connect with animals in those areas, we become really attached to the place and the habitat itself.
Not all of these places become equally appealing to us, necessarily. We had one author who did a field job in the desert, and she was miserable. She hated it. But later she did a fish job and discovered that she likes to be cold and wet and in rivers, and she ended up becoming a fish biologist, and that’s where she thrived.
Her great experiences with colleagues and friends on certain rivers meant that those rivers became profoundly important to her. When I did my master’s work, I loved mountain country to begin with, but working with this tiny, amazing songbird that lives in mountain streams, I fell in love with mountain streams and mountain habitat, and that became where I wanted to be in life.
And as you said, Émilie Desjardins and Kira Cassidy both fell in love with the High Arctic, in part because of their wonderful experiences there. Kira, who is on the cover of the book, has this incredible experience playing tag alongside Arctic wolves and interacting with them. That became such a special, memorable experience for her.
So we really do connect to the places where we have amazing experiences, either with the wildlife or with the people we’re working with.
Smith: There’s another side of this I want to ask you about. Two other authors, Marie Tosa and Julia Smith, tell stories of their work inadvertently killing the very animals they’re striving to protect.
A white-tailed deer in Tosa’s case, and a wolf in Smith’s case. These were, for me, the most gut-wrenching stories in the book, for the animals and for the humans doing work that rarely, but sometimes, actually hurts the animal. Talk with us about that tension.
Osborn: To reassure people, we only have two really tragic stories in this book.
And they are hard to read. They made me teary every time I read them. I think the worst nightmare for field biologists is inadvertently killing one of the animals you’re working with. Wild animals can get stressed out. Things can happen that we can’t predict. Accidents and situations beyond our control happen when we work with wildlife, even though we try to take every precaution.
Many of us become really attached to the wildlife we’re working with. Especially in Julia’s case, it was an endangered species, and she had spent years fighting to bring this species back and recover it. So losing an animal through our work is intensely painful. And as Marie and Julia show, many of us never recover from those losses.
These losses clearly tormented these women forevermore. But I think that’s a tribute to them as biologists. They really cared about these animals. They were heartbroken about what happened. They honor these animals by never getting over these losses. And I think people learn from these situations, even when there are things we can’t control.
We take more precautionary measures and do things differently. People who have had these experiences try ten times harder and really show others what needs to be done to keep wildlife safe and protected. We’re constantly revisiting protocols and trying to do better.
It’s the hardest situation, I think, that we face.
Smith: They were such hard stories to read. Like I said, I’m glad you all included them. It’s part of the world. But they were very hard to read.
Osborn: They really are. It is something that happens, and I think their reactions, how they handled it, what it meant to them, and how it changed their lives were really significant and important.
Smith: I want to ask a related question about purpose. It stood out that many of the women found their purpose in life by living in and with the tensions we’ve been talking about the last few minutes. So many stories relate the power of friendship, mentorship, women wholeheartedly supporting other women in their field pursuits. What have you found in your own career?
Osborn: In my own career, I’ve been remarkably supported by women and have developed some amazing friendships with women I worked with, as did many other women in this book. I especially felt supported by some of the women I worked for. Field work is intense, and our shared experiences often create lifelong bonds with other women.
I found my women bosses were often more supportive and encouraging, whereas some of my male bosses were more critical, and would give me compliments by teasing me and giving me a hard time, which wasn’t always the best strategy. But I think these shared experiences really create amazing bonds with people.
I did have many more challenges with men in my work, although a few men were very supportive and wonderful. During my career, as with other women, I struggled with sexual harassment, sexual discrimination, and really terrible pay inequities, getting paid half of what my male colleagues did when I had much more experience.
Not all women experience those things. Susie, my co-editor, had none of those experiences. She always tells me what wonderful male mentors she had. But it’s different in the field as a woman. I often felt that every time I started a field job, I had to prove myself from scratch. I might have years of experience under my belt, I might have done a ton of different projects, and yet the men I worked with would never assume that I was competent, and I had to prove myself over and over again, whereas women more readily accepted my background and my skills.
So I sometimes found it exhausting dealing with men in the field, even in those subtle ways. Some men were very dismissive and demeaning to women in the field. I encountered that recently when I was giving a presentation.
A young woman said that she had been put down so much by men that she’d almost given up. She said men had told her women weren’t cut out for this kind of job. I just held up our book and said, “Here are 42 stories about how able women are to do this job.” When we do this work and share experiences with wild animals and other creatures, it does create wonderful, often very supportive bonds and friendships.
Smith: I’m wondering, Sophie, would you read us a passage from the book? Whatever you want. I’d love to hear some of the book in your voice.
Osborn: Seeing as I was just talking about how it’s different for women as field biologists than it is for men, there are different pressures that women are often up against.
So here’s a little passage from a kind of haunting story by one of our botanists. It’s called “Walk the Desert Alone.” I think it’s an illustrative passage about how different it is for women in the field than men.
“For women who camp solo, there is an art to choosing a campsite. I make this generalization for two reasons. First, because I have discussed the topic with a few women I know who regularly camp alone, and they all admit to employing similar tactics, and second, because it has become clear to me that my male friends who do similar field work put almost no thought into choosing their campsites.
“A male colleague once told me about a time he parked on the edge of a dirt road in the middle of the night and set up his cot next to his truck. In the morning, he woke to the sound of dogs barking, opened his eyes, and discovered he’d camped in someone’s front yard. When I camp alone, I make a plan well before dark.
“I decide early in the day where I intend to camp that night and what route I will take to get there. My primary goal is to be out of sight, and thus out of mind, of anyone. It helps if I’m familiar with the area and know which roads are likely to be well-traveled, particularly during the evening hours. I make sure my camp is not visible from such roads if possible.
“Dense pinyon pine forest is my favorite camping habitat because I can turn onto a two-track woodcutting road, follow it for 50 yards, and be completely hidden from view. As a backup safety measure, I try to camp incognito. When I worked for the tribe, I never once set up a tent. I always slept in the bed of my truck with the tailgate up.
“I kept all my gear inside the cab or next to me in the truck bed. If anyone did happen to drive past, they would only see a parked truck, not a camp. I disabled the dome light in the cab so it no longer turned on automatically when I opened or closed a door. I used a headlamp, never a lantern, and only when I needed it to see something in particular.
“These personal guidelines have never let me down. After I left my job with the tribe and began working in national forests more often, I started allowing myself the luxury of a tent as long as I was camping in an area where campers would normally be found, but I still tried to camp out of sight. In nine years of solo camping, I’ve never been approached, let alone harassed after dark.”
That’s just a very different experience of camping for women than for men. And it also goes to show that probably the biggest fear of most women working in the wild is not wild animals, but strange men. Unfortunately, we have to take precautions for that.
Smith: I highlighted that passage as well. It very much hit the point that women have to approach the job in a pretty different way than men do. I’m glad you read that. It was a fascinating passage.
Let me ask you a question related to that. Are you optimistic or pessimistic about the future possibilities for women in field biology? And why or why not?
Osborn: I am incredibly optimistic about future possibilities for women in field biology. Working on this book and learning about the incredible work that so many capable, confident, strong, independent women are doing made me feel that women really are thriving in this field.
They make phenomenal field biologists. There are so many women doing amazing work out there. They’re brave, hardworking, resourceful, and many are really compassionate, which I think is a very important quality in field biologists. I don’t think the challenges women face are necessarily going to disappear any time soon, but I do think it’s getting harder and harder for people to claim that women aren’t cut out for this kind of work or don’t belong in this field.
I think our stories really illustrate how wrong that is. Women are doing just fine with this work. They excel as field biologists. That makes me feel very optimistic about it all, and I hope this book really shows people the phenomenal work that women are doing out there.
Smith: As I read this book, I became really interested in, let’s call it, the industry of field biology, and I’ve got a few questions about that. You mentioned a few minutes ago that work tends to be seasonal, aligned maybe to animals’ mating season or migratory season or whatever it is.
That’s pretty different from a lot of careers. It seems similar to the gig economy or independent contractor work. How do field biologists typically find work and manage that in their careers?
Osborn: Primarily, there are a lot of wildlife job boards that people check. They used to be on paper; now they’re online. This is where agencies, environmental consulting companies, and universities often advertise for seasonal or permanent help. Graduate students and biology professors all over the country advertise positions on boards like these.
There are also job boards at universities and agencies, and there’s word of mouth too. Many of us do a variety of jobs early in our careers so that we can learn the various techniques that are important in our field. Then we go on to more permanent jobs, or oftentimes we go back to school and get into a position to hire field techs and field crews of our own.
More senior, higher-level positions often involve more desk time and less time in the field, but I think most wildlife biologists, and professors who are biologists, still try to incorporate at least some seasonal field research into their year of work.
Smith: Has field biology always been like that? Or how has it evolved during your career?
Osborn: It has been like that in my experience. I’ve been looking for field jobs less recently, since I’ve been writing about my field work. But I still check the job boards pretty frequently, and it seems to be the way things are still being done.
The tricky thing is that a lot of wildlife work is really captivating and fun, and a lot of people want to be involved in it. So employers and university professors can get away with paying very low wages, because there is a lot of competition for those positions.
Sometimes people who are starting out get paid no wages, or they get a per diem or something minor. So it can be tough to make a go of it while you’re starting out and gaining experience. Hopefully that is starting to change, but natural resources in general aren’t super well-funded, so I suspect it’s still pretty challenging from that standpoint.
Smith: What skills are needed in a good field biologist? Let’s assume knowledge of the subject matter is a given. I’m interested in what skills matter in the field.
Osborn: It really is variable and depends on what kind of biological work you’re doing. In my field, certain skills are important, like radio tracking, how to track animals we’ve outfitted with radio transmitters, or how to trap birds with what we call mist nets.
They’re big nets with very fine mesh that birds have a hard time seeing. But in my experience, most field biology skills can be learned and improved upon over time. More important to me are people’s attitudes and certain qualities. I think having certain qualities is much more important than your original skill set.
First among these for field biologists is determination. Field jobs can be incredibly challenging, both physically and mentally. We deal with terrible weather, and we have insanely long work days. When I was working on condors, I often put in 20-hour work days.
And animals don’t take vacations, so we work holidays. Sometimes conditions are really hard. So I think having a deep commitment to your job, being willing to work really hard, and being determined to stick with it no matter what you’re up against is vital. When I look back on my life, maybe I should have, but I never questioned any of the tasks I was assigned when I was a lowly field tech.
I felt like, “Ouf, I’m scared to do that,” or, “That’s intimidating, but that’s what the job requires, so I need to do it.” If I had a hard time lifting a 70-pound backpack, I had to figure out a way to get it on my back and just do it, and I did. I stepped up and did what needed to be done.
Not everyone feels comfortable doing that. I had field techs when I was doing condor work who decided it was just too much for them, too overwhelming and hard a job. So determination is a big one. The field biologists I most admired seemed pretty tireless.
They could just go and go forever and put in extraordinarily long days. They were physically fit. It also helps to be resourceful and creative and flexible, because you never know when your vehicle is going to break down in the middle of nowhere. You never know when your equipment will fail or the wildlife will fail to show up.
So I think those things are important. And I think compassion and care are incredibly important, because the more we care about the animals we’re working with, the more committed we are to seeing them succeed and thrive, and the more likely we are to treat wildlife with the respect and care it deserves.
So those are all qualities, I think, that make a good field biologist. The rest we can learn as we go along.
Smith: I love that. I love everything you just said, and I especially love the resourceful point. Just figure it out. So much of life, period, is that you don’t know the answer. Nobody knows the answer. You are there. You’ve got to figure out what to do, make decisions, and move forward.
Osborn: Exactly. One of the stories is one I wrote about my work in Guatemala. We had a catastrophic vehicle failure in the middle of nowhere, in a place that could be fairly dangerous for women, and we had to figure out how to get ourselves out of it, and we did.
When we’re up against those kinds of situations and we get through them, I think it really builds our confidence and our strength. A lot of women field biologists have gone through difficult experiences and found a solution, and that really gives them a lot of independence and confidence.
Smith: I love all that, Sophie. Thank you. As I was reading, I came up with a question that’s not addressed in your book, but I’m interested because it’s in the water these days. How will AI change the work of field biology? I can see an argument where there are more ways to analyze data, and so more biologists will be computer jockeys.
And I can see the opposite argument, where AI handling more analysis frees more biologists to do the work in the field to feed the machine. What’s your model for how AI is going to impact the industry, and how it’s going to change the day-to-day work of field biology?
Osborn: It’s an amazing question, and I don’t know that I feel equipped to answer it, because I don’t know enough about AI and its possibilities in this field per se. But I think, as with so many other fields, it’s going to be a bit of a mixed bag. It certainly will play a bigger role, for example, in the statistical analyses that often accompany wildlife research, which might be helpful for those of us who don’t feel wildly strong in statistics.
I also imagine it will change things in the same way that some of our technological advances already have. Many biologists now track animals that wear GPS collars, and they can sit at their desks and download information about where their animals are without even going into the field.
Game cameras have changed things a lot, because people just go out, deploy a game camera, then pick it up later and watch the videos of what was happening with the wildlife. With a lot of bird work, bird counts used to be done by bird biologists. They would listen to the songs and see what birds were in an area.
Those are now being replaced by recorders that are deployed out in the woods and retrieved later. AI is particularly useful in those situations, because there are just reams of data, reams of bird songs and calls, and AI is very good at parsing it out and identifying which birds are in that area.
So a lot of the AI developments will mean less time in the field for biologists, I think. That might be good at times; it’s less uncomfortable to be in your comfortable office and not out in the rain. But hopefully AI will also free biologists in certain jobs to go out and stay out in the field.
I think being out in the field with wildlife and plants and habitat is transformative. People really form deep connections with nature and with their work by being out in the field, and not just by sitting at their office watching things on a video camera. So hopefully it will have as many benefits as it has concerning issues.
Smith: One last question about the industry of field biology. I’m curious, what are the great lessons of field biology? What are the meta-lessons?
Osborn: That’s a big question. For me, first and foremost, and this is a bit depressing, is that humanity has wreaked havoc on the natural world.
We struggle all the time with the pressures humanity has inflicted on nature, and with how animals and plants and habitats are trying to compensate for that. But the flip side is that I’ve also seen, and this is unique to humans, that we have the capacity, and often the desire, to restore what we have broken.
Endangered species are a classic example of that. Humanity has inflicted a lot of pressures on certain animals, and their numbers have declined as a result. They’ve become endangered. But we are unique among animals in not wanting these other animals to disappear.
So we work incredibly hard to restore them and restore habitats and bring these animals back. I think that is really hopeful, too. Field biology reveals nature’s fragility to us. It shows us how much things can unravel. But it also helps us understand what it takes to save nature and help it thrive.
One of the things I really notice in my work in field biology is how much wildlife and nature are forced to accommodate humanity. So much wildlife, to avoid being harmed by us or having to deal with us, has to change its habits and its haunts and the way it lives its lives.
What I would really love, and one of the lessons I hope people take away from reading these books and learning about wildlife, is that wildlife is constantly accommodating us. If we can take some small measures to accommodate wildlife, to recognize that there are other creatures out there trying to live their lives and produce young and migrate or make a living in a certain place, if we could do more to accommodate the wildlife that surrounds us, that would be a wonderful lesson to take away.
Smith: I love all those. Those all come out in the book as well, I’d say. They weren’t written as such, but those themes are very evident as story after story accumulates in the book. Very tangible lessons and insights come out through the book, too.
Osborn: Good.
Smith: All right, Sophie, I’ve got two last questions for you.
Osborn: Okay.
Smith: First, I’ve got to ask this random question. I’m a total product nerd. I’ve got my special notebook here, my special pen. I love all that stuff. Lindsay Gray Carlson mentions using a Rite in the Rain notebook, which is waterproof and awesome.
I’m curious, if you have thoughts on this, what are some of the other essential field tools? Knives, hats, sunglasses, whatever comes to mind. I’m just interested in the product nerd stuff.
Osborn: The Rite in the Rain is probably one of the best products. They are waterproof. They are awesome. And for people like me who still take notes in the field, they’re essential.
I also found that another essential tool was a compact multipurpose tool, like a Leatherman. It’s just basic equipment that’s good to have along. In one of my earliest field jobs, we needed a knife and somebody said, “Have you got a knife on you?” I didn’t, and it made our work much more difficult. After that, I made sure I got a Leatherman, and I always carried it with me in the field. So you are halfway to becoming a field person.
Smith: I love the Leatherman. They are so awesome.
Osborn: It’s so useful. Binoculars are essential for many jobs, not just bird work. Most of us get used to carrying binoculars around. Bear spray is really important in many jobs in wild country. Good footwear, because we’re often hiking crazy miles. And of course, appropriate waterproof clothing, and sometimes a second set of clothes.
We often have to hike miles into the area where we’re going to do our work, and we pour with sweat while we’re hiking in, so we pull a second outfit out of our backpacks. Food and water are key. But mainly it’s just practical outdoor gear, I think, that’s essential.
Smith: I think I’ve told you, you and I had an exchange when we were talking about Feather Trails. I’d asked you about good binoculars. It’s just so great to carry a pair and be able to see much, much better, identify birds, and be on the lookout for other wildlife. It’s awesome.
Osborn: Exactly. It is really key for wildlife work, for sure.
Smith: All right, Sophie, one last question for you. I’ve got to know: what will you work on next?
Osborn: I’m a bit in transition now after completing these two books. I’m working to promote Wild Work and Feather Trails, and I always want to continue advocating for birds through my writing.
What I would love is to be more directly involved in bird conservation work. But those jobs are hard to get, especially at my age. I would also love to write a novel that involves birds. So I have lots of ideas, but nothing definitive at the moment. Although I feel like I need to get cracking and write another book so that we can talk again in another year or two. I so enjoyed our last two conversations.
Smith: Yes, that’s the answer I wanted, Sophie.
Osborn: You’ve given me more motivation.
Smith: Any book you write, even if it’s about the grass growing, I will read it. It will be awesome, and I would love to interview you about it.
Osborn: I really appreciate it. I’ve loved our conversations.
Smith: Sophie, this has been wonderful. I loved Wild Work. I love your Substack, Words for Birds. If people haven’t checked that out, they should. It’s the highlight of the first day of every month, about a new bird. It’s wonderful.
Thank you. I’ve loved today’s conversation. I’m just so grateful to you for joining me today, Sophie. Thank you.
Osborn: I have loved it. I’m so grateful to be here. Thanks, Russell.
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