Environmental Internships: The ""Natural"" Jobs

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JOB BENEFITS

What can a person expect to gain from an environmental training program?

First and foremost, such jobs offer a chance to study under seasoned professionals and obtain some valuable firsthand experience . . . and to perform a worthwhile service for the planet. A lot of former interns have told me that they learned skills they could never have mastered in a traditional classroom setting.

Andrew Toombs, who studied forestry at Pennsylvania State University, wasfor instance—thoroughly familiar with the basics of textbook ecology . . . but he needed solid field experience in his hoped—for occupation of teaching young children about nature. During a threemonth internship at the Sharon Audubon Center (where I also worked), Andy had the opportunity to lead groups of elementary school students on nature discovery walks, and—under the guidance of the center's director and visiting naturalists-he developed enough confidence and experience to accept a full-time position, guiding similar groups, at a nature center near his home.

Besides acquiring experience that relates strictly to environmental occupations, an intern can pick up lots of just plain valuable outdoor skills. Field training usually includes instruction in working with tractors, chain saws, spotting scopes, microscopes, or water and soil sampling kits . . . and sometimes lessons in such "arts" as taxidermy. Through specialized programs, a trainee can also learn wildlife management, ecological research, and environmental journalism . . . or even design his or her own indepth research project.

The focus of most general internships, however, will be determined by the location or special goals of the sponsoring center itself. At the Manomet Bird Observatory in Massachusetts, for example, interns are involved with banding the thousands of birds that are netted each season by the observatory's fulltime employees. After a few months of such work, a Manomet trainee will become quite proficient at identifying different species and tagging them before release.

On the other hand, a student worker at the Chesapeake Bay Center for Environmental Studies may spend much of his or her time on a boat, collecting fish specimens and analyzing water quality. Other ongoing projects at the center—which is located outside Annapolis, Maryland—include the study of a nearby deer population and the development of written materials to publicize the organization's activities.

Beyond the technical skills and handson experience that an intern can acquire by working at an environmental study center, there's the added aesthetic benefit of living and laboring in isolated—and usually very beautifullocations. For instance, college student Bonnie Burkhart spent one summer in Hawaii's Volcanoes National Park, an exotic wilderness area with spectacular ocean views. As a trainee for the Student Conservation Association, Bonnie received free transportation, free housing on park grounds, and a $30-a-month food allowance. During her three-month stay, the young woman assisted a Ph.D. candidate in his field studies of the endangered nene goose.

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