The Realities of a Career in Wildlife Management
Everyone has seen the Discovery Channel and National Geographic wildlife programmes on TV. For some viewers, the lifestyle of a person working in wildlife management and communing with wild animals seems to be both exciting and rewarding.
But a rock star doesn’t just pick a guitar one day and become an instant sensation. The people who are bona fide rock stars in the field of wildlife management didn’t just pick up a camera and venture out into the wilderness to capture amazing footage of animals in their natural environment.
For every Steve Irwin or David Attenborough on TV, there are thousands of dedicated people toiling away in laboratories or field campsites that represent the true lifestyle of a career in wildlife management.
The Education Requirements of Wildlife Management
Many of the people who you see on screen in looking like Indiana Jones on safari have doctorates or advanced degrees in zoology, biology or marine biology. Through the miracle of tape editing, these people are depicted to be leading an exciting lifestyle exploring the world around us.
The reality is that most of them spend hours or days in front of a computer or in a laboratory. They spend months or years collecting, sorting and analysing data they have obtained through their research on the thousands of species of existing animals on the planet.
Their education requirements depend on their specialisation. For example, before marine biologists can experience the joys of swimming with the whales, they face years of education in not just oceanography, but chemistry, molecular biology, physics and geology as well.
They also have to have mathematics, computing and writing skills as well. Their mathematics and computing skills are necessary to construct mathematical computer models that will allow them to analyse their data objectively. Their writing skills are used to express the results of their studies clearly.
All this means that if you hope for a career in the world of wildlife management, it’s better to spend most of your time in the classroom, rather than the forest.
